


Love Potion #9 🧪

by murderlight



Category: Bleach
Genre: Chocolate, Humour, Ichigo is an upstanding person, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Romance, Temptation, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-10-28 03:03:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17779373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murderlight/pseuds/murderlight
Summary: Gifted with a horrifying box of potion-laced chocolates from Urahara in the hopes he might feed them to somebody, Ichigo thought all the excitement for Valentine’s Day was done with. Then Grimmjow had to get snacky.A story in which Ichigo is entrusted with the scientifically altered affections of his once-enemy, and might just discover some of his own.





	1. Chapter 1

It all started, as most things did, with Urahara having a dumb idea and being smart enough to make it a reality.

“I made a love potion,” he told Ichigo proudly, gesturing at the rows of picture perfect milk chocolate hearts. “They’ve even got strawberry flavoured filling! Now you can finally get laid.”

Ichigo blinked at the box. “You want me to date rape someone by feeding them chocolates so they love me.”

“I wouldn’t put it in those exact words. But, yes.”

“Wait, why did you skip straight to drugs if you wanted me to get laid? Which,” Ichigo said crossly, realising he was offended for all the wrong reasons, “for the record, I don’t need help with. I’m single by choice.”

“That’s just something ugly people say!” Urahara cried, slapping the lid down on the box of chocolates and pushing them into his hands. “Give these to someone and report back to me extensively. Or I’ll feed them to you in your sleep and make you my ginger sex slave.”

Figuring the damn things were better off in his possession than Urahara’s, Ichigo gave in and took them home from the shop that evening, fuming the entire way. How come nobody had ever told him he was ugly? It seemed like the kind of important information he should know. Fucking Urahara. Who the hell just decided to invent love potion anyway? It probably worked, too, since while generally being a walking factory of shit that had the potential to break the world, Urahara was a straight-up genius. Love potion was probably one of the safer inventions that had come out of that man in the last few years.

It had been three years since the end of the quincy war, and peace did weird things to bored and clever men. Ichigo felt confident that if Urahara didn’t have a life to meddle in somehow he’d have conquered the world already.

When he finally got home, a bright moon already rising high over the skyline, he didn’t make it in without his prize being noticed.

“Oh, Ichi-nii got a Valentine’s Day gift!” Yuzu exclaimed happily as he set the box down on the dining table. Her eyes were bright as she crawled over the edge of the couch to get a better look. “Who are they from? Orihime-chan?”

“Urahara,” Ichigo said flatly. His sister’s eyebrows shot up.

“I’ll bake something for White Day next month that you can give him in return.”

“Thanks. Fill it with arsenic.” Pulling out a chair, Ichigo sat down and opened the lid on the chocolates. They smelled sweet, and just looked like the kind of professional job he’d expect from one of those fancy shops Yuzu liked fogging up the windows of. Picking one up, he turned it over and examined it. There was a small seam in the chocolate where the two sides had been pressed together, indicating there really was a filling in there. Casting a quick glance to Yuzu, who was back to channel surfing, he broke it in half. His fingertips punched down through the chocolate shell as he did so, and pink goo oozed out of its casing. It definitely smelled like strawberries, with a tiny hint of something medicinal behind it. Fuck, it really was a potion. He darted to the garbage and dropped the chocolate in there, then scrubbed his hands in the sink until they were sore.

Ichigo was just drying his hands when there was a heavy, demanding knock on the door. Instinct said that wasn’t a friendly knock.

“I’ll get it,” he told Yuzu, who hadn’t moved an inch. “Don’t touch those chocolates, whatever you do. They’re poisoned.”

“I can make better chocolate than he can,” she said with disinterest. “One day, I’m going to open a rival candy store and run his business into the ground. He’ll be going through my trash for the secret to my brilliance and go mad trying to find it. Finally, he’ll die in poverty still rambling about my amazing chocolate skills.”

Ichigo stared. “Are you okay?”

“Karin keeps talking about how cool he is, so I’ve decided to destroy him.”

The knock at the door was bordering on something violent. Disturbed by Yuzu’s apparent revenge fantasy—if it was just a fantasy—he jogged into the hall and headed for the front door, pulling it open just in time to cop a rapping fist to the forehead.

“Ow!”

“Hah.” Grimmjow didn’t even look sorry. “Dickhead. Where is she? I don’t have all fuckin’ day.”

Seeing Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez on his doorstep, blue-haired and grinning like a maniac, would have horrified Ichigo a few years ago. As it was, he still wasn’t pleased to see the asshole, especially because whenever he turned up so did a massive rainbow of bruises all over Ichigo’s body. They loved to fight, and they were both getting a lot stronger in their downtime, but Grimmjow fought like he actually wanted to kill Ichigo. With him basically on Urahara’s shady payroll like a yakuza enforcer these days, it meant he was in the area all the damn time. Always sneering at him, sword in hand, telling him in graphic detail all the things he’d like to do to his body. He’d been on a real roll with slow organ removal last time they fought. But none of that explained what the hell Grimmjow was talking about.

“Where’s who?”

Grimmjow hefted a small grocery bag with ill-concealed impatience. “Little bitch who ordered anti-hollow shit off Kisuke. Carrot?”

Oh. “Karin. She’s not here right now.” Frowning at the bag, then at Grimmjow, Ichigo couldn’t quite help himself. “I can’t believe Urahara has you delivering now. Don’t you have any self-respect?” The look he received for that was oddly condescending, like maybe Grimmjow thought he was a little bit stupid. It pricked his ego enough that he slammed his shoulders up defensively. “Whatever. Give it here then.” He reached out to take the bag, only to have it yanked out of reach.

“Like I’m fuckin’ leaving this shit with you,” Grimmjow scoffed. “You’re dumb enough to season your rice with the poison mace. It goes to Carrot—”

“Karin.”

“—or I take it back to the fuckin’ shop.” Turning on one silver-worked black boot, Grimmjow actually started to leave. Knowing Karin would take it out of his ass if she had to go back to the shop, Ichigo grit his teeth and opened the door wide.

“Fuck. Fine, come in and wait. But if you talk to my sister—if you  _look_  at Yuzu at all, I’ll rip every strand of hair out of your head.”

“Got no interest in little girls, Kurosaki.” But Grimmjow stepped inside the house, even toed off his boots and kicked them toward the shoe rack. Ichigo was grossed out to realise he wasn’t wearing socks; his bare feet making sticky little smacking sounds on the floorboards. “Three more favours like this and Kisuke’s gotta fight me in bankai. Wanna see how many times I can slice and dice that fucker before he puts himself back together.” Swinging the bag off one finger by the handle, he sauntered down the hall like he owned the place. Ichigo followed with irritated resignation, shoving him when he almost took out the ornamental vase on the hall stand.

Okay, so Grimmjow was in Ichigo’s house. New, weird, bad. He’d never been inside before, no matter how many times he’d shown up to hassle Ichigo into finishing all his ‘human shit’ so they could go beat each other senseless in Urahara’s training bunker. It felt unsafe, like a concession. Ichigo didn’t trust Grimmjow’s temper or tendency for violence enough for him to be in the house. He should have let him leave with the order.

“Think I can hear your asshole clenching from here.” Grimmjow’s backward glance was blue and almost arctic with judgement. “Calm the fuck down. I don’t want to eat your shitty family.” Walking into the open plan living area, he cast his eyes around each zone from the television, the couch where Yuzu was staring in silent confusion, to the small kitchen and dining table. Ichigo was tempted to ask what he thought of the place, but Grimmjow’s opinion on humanity was almost universally bad. He did seem to tolerate Urahara a lot better than anyone else though, but that probably had more to do with their stupid war buddy team-up history. Not that Ichigo cared.

“Is that a hollow?” Yuzu asked, digging around in her pocket for the small case she kept on her at all times. “Let me guess, this is Grimmjow-san?” Pulling out the little flat case, she stretched open her eyelid and pressed a small disk against her eyeball. Blinking the custom contact lens into place, she looked back over at the spot where Grimmjow stood frowning at her. One of her eyes was now emerald green and had lines of data flickering through it. “Nice to meet you.”

Grimmjow just grunted and squinted at her eye. “That lets you see hollows?”

“Urahara-san’s latest attempt to win my favour,” she sniffed. “I suppose it’s useful, but he can’t have my recipe book.”

“Good. Make him suffer.” At that, Yuzu flashed him a smile. Clearly anyone who approved of making Urahara miserable was a friend of hers.

“Stop talking to each other,” Ichigo said sternly, feeling fidgety. “Yuzu, text Karin and tell her to get her ass home so Grimmjow can leave. Grimmjow…just, stand near a wall and don’t touch anything.”

Naturally, because Ichigo had the luck of about sixteen broken mirrors and a herd of black cats running past, the interior door to the clinic slammed open at that exact moment and Isshin lurched into the room. His white coat had a disturbingly dark red splatter of blood across it and his eyes were actually serious for once.

“Ichigo! I have an open femoral fracture too close to the artery and the patient is on some kind of drug. I can’t do three things at once. Get in here.”

Shit. “I’m on it,” he said, rolling his sleeves up. His medical skills were more incidental than anything, but he knew from past experience that if they had anything unknown in their system, giving them sedatives might do more damage. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he helped his dad set a bone. Glancing back at Grimmjow and Yuzu, he desperately thought fast. “Yuzu, come help. Find the straps in case we need them.” They probably wouldn’t, but he wasn’t leaving Grimmjow alone with her.

Grimmjow’s lip curled in a way that said he knew exactly what Ichigo was doing, but he otherwise didn’t say anything. He hung the bag on the corner of one of the dining chairs and threw himself down into another. So much for standing out of the way. Before he ran to follow his father, Ichigo flicked the lid back on the chocolates and tossed them on the kitchen bench. Narrowed eyes followed them for a moment, then flickered away in boredom.

“Ichigo!” Isshin was yelling from the clinic. “Hurry up!”

Ichigo hurried. Just a typical day in the Kurosaki household, he thought, feeling tense enough to snap something. He ran through the door and into absolute mayhem.

The patient was definitely on something, and it translated to a lot of semi-conscious thrashing and squirts of blood coming out at random intervals. Ichigo took one look at the jutting pinkish-white snap of the guy’s thigh bone coming up through his torn jeans and felt a little dizzy. In the corner, a small, panicked man in a suit was babbling apologies about not hitting the brakes in time.

In the end it took all three of them  _and_  Yuzu’s dusty set of restraints to get the guy under control enough to stop the lower portion of his broken thigh from stabbing his artery. Yuzu took a flying backhand to the mouth for all her efforts to buckle him down, and ended up half-sitting on his chest and rolling off to pull the strap taut with her own body weight. The only indication she secured it was the thumbs up that shot over the other side of the bed. For his part, Ichigo nearly ended up with a broken wrist during it all when the guy grabbed his arm just as the bone was pushed back into place and splinted, his eyes rolling back so far they were showing white.

“That oughta do it,” Isshin said finally when they had him under control, out of breath and sweating along his hairline. “Yuzu, I need a restock of sedatives. Ichigo, you took a spray to the neck. Any of that get in your mouth and eyes?”

Ichigo looked up from his screaming arm and realised he had blood down his shirt. Oh, gross. He plucked at it with disgust.

“Nothing a boiling hot shower won’t fix. Yuzu, how’s the jaw?” She tongued her bee-stung looking lower lip and made a face, her green contact lens still doing readouts.

“Fine.”

The flicker of red and blue lights through the front windows said the ambulance was arriving to transport the guy to the hospital. Isshin, ever grateful for their assistance, hissed at them to get out of the clinic before the paramedics saw them. They bundled through the internal door, almost tripping over each other. Yuzu raised two friction burned palms and gave him puppy eyes over her swollen lip.

“Can I use the shower first? Strapping the hulk in there made me break a sweat.”

“I am literally covered in human blood.”

“I’ll soak your shirt?”

Ichigo made a horrible face—and started tugging his shirt off over his head. Ah fuck, his arm hurt. He balled it up and shoved it at her.

“You owe me.”

“There’s antibacterial wipes under the kitchen sink!” she chirped, half lisping around her sore mouth. “Thanks, Ichi-nii!”

Left shirtless beside the kitchen, prodding at the stickiness—yep, that was blood—on his neck, Ichigo sighed and started hunting for the wet wipes.

“Grimmjow, are you still here?” he called, hands and knees in front of the sink cupboard. Man, they had like five bottles of detergent. Who needed that much? “I guess I’m a bad host for leaving you alone in here. You didn’t shred the curtains or piss on the furniture, did you?” Ooh, bingo. Grabbing the plastic container of wipes, he uncapped the lid right there and ripped out five wipes worth of disinfectant and started washing his neck and chest with them. Mm, tea-tree scent. When he didn’t hear Grimmjow reply, Ichigo unfolded to his feet, still scrubbing himself pink. “Hey, Grimmjow.”

A few things became instantly apparent as he properly took in the dining area, and none of it was good. First was that Grimmjow had abandoned the chair for the floor, where he was hunched over in his black jumpsuit and white jacket, hands gripping his sides. His face was pushed down so hard it was practically buried between his knees. It was the smallest that Ichigo had ever seen him look. Two more clues told him what had happened in the form of a dropped soul phone showing a received message from Urahara and a horrifyingly familiar box of chocolates. Four of them were missing, including the one Ichigo had thrown out.

Like it cost him a gargantuan effort, Grimmjow lifted his head and stared over at him in misery. That was how Ichigo discovered that the love potion had turned his familiar green estigma a burning orange.

The same colour as Ichigo’s hair.

“Kurosaki,” he rasped, “what the hell was in those chocolates?”

And with that, Ichigo’s entire day was shot completely to hell.

It immediately got a lot worse for Grimmjow, though. Upon seeing Ichigo in the flesh his entire body seemed to cramp up, folding him down further into that weird upright foetal position that resembled a black knot of limbs and blue hair than anything fierce and hollow-like. Diving on the phone sitting beside him, Ichigo called for help.

“Oh, it’s probably just the feedback loop of all the terrible things he ever did to you,” Urahara said cheerfully. “It’s a literal, physical guilt trip! Just be nice to him and it should fade quickly. My apologies for forcing you into this, by the way, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to test these out. Call it one of my last two favours from Grimmjow. He really wants that bankai fight.”

“You’re a monster,” Ichigo said flatly, and ended the call. Hell with Grimmjow and his stomach cramps, what the hell was  _he_  going to do with some doped up hollow acting like a complete inversion of the asshole he knew? All his pop culture knowledge said that love potions turned people into drooling idiots making goo-goo eyes at whoever they fell for. The idea of Grimmjow changing that much was fucking repulsive. Maybe he could drag him outside onto the kerb before he came out of his weird cramp attack.

But he just kept sitting there, arms clenched around his midsection, every muscle drawn as tight as a bow. He looked like he was in agony. So much for a love potion. This looked more like a torture device.

_Be nice to him._

Fuck you, Urahara, Ichigo thought tiredly and knelt down to try to fold Grimmjow out of his position so he could see what was going on.

“I’m just gonna unzip you a bit,” Ichigo said, grabbing the metal tag at the top of his zipper and trying to pull it down. “Lean back. I don’t think you should have been eating anything Urahara made.”

“You did,” Grimmjow grated out, mostly into his knees. “Message said…it was a new fighting supplement he gave you. One was missing—”

“Because I threw it in the garbage, dipshit! Why are you so stupid? It’s Urahara!” Shoving him back with brute force until he was pressed against the dining room chairs, Ichigo yanked the zipper down, knocking his arms away until he could see what was going on in the hard muscle of his abdomen. His eyes widened. “Oh, fuck. That’s…not normal.”

Grimmjow’s hollow hole was three times its size and widening further, like an unstable singularity. If he kept going it was going to reach the outer edges of his waist and split him in half. Was that what happened when a heartless hollow suddenly grew one thanks to science? Jeez, it looked bad. It was a bad, bad reaction. The trembling pain crossing Grimmjow’s face said it wasn’t a metaphorical ache, either. It could kill him. Fuck. Shit. Fuck.

Fuck.

_Be nice to him._

“Do you want to stay here the night?” Ichigo asked loudly, his eyes on the ceiling and cheeks aflame. “Karin might not be back til later.” Grimmjow’s only response was to almost bite through his lip to stop from yelling. The hole looked like it was going to crack at every stress point, black lines running out of it like ink. It looked like a badly stylised sun motif. Reflexively, Ichigo stuck the back of his hand against the innermost rim of the hole, like a parent testing for a fever. Grimmjow stared down at his hand with blazing confusion and grabbed his arm—right where the broken leg junkie had gotten him.

Ichigo yelped like a kicked puppy. Grimmjow yelped right back.

" _Sorry._ " He let his hand flop to the ground like a dead fish.

“Forget it,” Ichigo replied, wincing as his bruises took on new and awful shades of blue and purple. “Let’s just stop you breaking in half. Urahara said I should be nice, but I think my nice and hollow nice are different. In fact, I’ve never even seen you be nice, so what if it ends up killing you faster, like Superman and kryptonite?”

Grimmjow’s response was to grab his fingers and put the furthermost tip of them back against the fluctuating rim of his ruined hollow hole. It was bigger than a dinner plate. Ichigo felt like he was touching someone’s infected piercing, a feeling not dulled by the furious heat radiating from the distorted void. Was this nice? Was it a nice thing to touch the hole? Oh fuck. Gross. Ichigo swallowed back his bile and reached in until his fingers curled over the back seam of Grimmjow’s…he couldn’t say hole anymore. Especially not when the rictus of agony Grimmjow’s expression was caught in started to fade with the contact. Slowly, the cracks started to recede, pulling back in until it was just a massive hole. Just as slowly, Ichigo dragged his fingers along skin that felt like strange, smooth softness, vibrant with heat. He’d always thought the inside of a hollow hole would be hard, like cartilage supporting organs. Instead it was just kind of firm, like muscle.

Weird.

When the hole slowly receded back to its usual size, Ichigo reluctantly dragged his fingers free and looked up into Grimmjow’s face.

“Are you okay?” Ichigo asked, distantly knowing he was sitting too close between Grimmjow’s spread knees. “Do I need to get my dad?” He thought about telling him that his eye markings had turned orange, but instinct told him he might get punched for it. It was an instinct that had nothing to do with the wondering way he was being watched just then; like he was some kind of secret that had just been revealed by an accidental spotlight.

“I’m fine,” Grimmjow said, snatching his gaze away. “Just—for a second felt like I’d killed you or something.”

“What?”

“Like…” He made a short, frustrated sound. “Like every time I punched you in your dumbass face came back to haunt me til I died.”

“A guilt trip,” Ichigo said, feeling defeated. “Don’t punch me for saying this, but you just ate three doses of love potion because Urahara is a sick, sick man.” The snort that news elicited wasn't quite what he expected.

“Hollows can’t love shit.”

“Yeah, and that’s why the hole in your middle nearly broke you in half. And why you haven’t tried to kill me for touching it just now. If there’s one thing I know about Urahara it’s that his dumbest ideas usually work the best.”

“Nah.” Grimmjow’s chin jutted out. “I’d know if I was under the influence of some shitty shinigami drug. No way in hell I can love anything.” He yanked the zipper back up with a single jerk and shot to his feet so fast Ichigo was knocked back onto his ass. “Shit, sorry.” A pale hand reached down to help him up.

Grabbing it unthinkingly, Ichigo was hauled easily to his feet. It should have been his first warning, that hand reached out to help him, but somehow he missed it. Expecting the grip to loosen once he got his footing, Ichigo blinked down at their clasped hands when he was tugged in, ever so slightly, until they stood flush together.

Uh oh.

Swallowing hard, he looked up with inevitable dismay to see stunned, tilted blue eyes staring down at him. There was a faint pink blush dusting Grimmjow’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose. His new estigma seemed to glow above it like a sunset of chemical imbalance gone wrong. Between them, their hands were clenched. A thumb was—was stroking over his knuckles, like Grimmjow didn’t even know he was doing it.

Oh god, it was a love potion, Ichigo thought with renewed incredulity, just as Grimmjow dipped his head and kissed his mouth in one quick surge. Violent, cruel, clever, wicked fucking Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez was drugged up and his mouth was wet and clumsy and warm, slammed up on his like he’d sell his sword just to crawl inside. Between them, the hand gripping his squeezed almost desperately. Ichigo didn’t know what to do. What the fuck should he do?

He couldn’t think of anything, so Ichigo just stood there for whole minutes while Grimmjow got it out of his system.

He…he was going to get it out of his system, right? The doubt filtered in around the same time Grimmjow’s other hand slipped around Ichigo’s waist to tug their hips together.

Any time now, he thought as a tongue slid between his teeth, sleek and curious for the texture of his own. A feeling of events spiraling swiftly out of his control was creeping up on him, depressingly familiar and unwanted. Steeling his resolve, Ichigo started to turn his head and pull out of the hold. He could taste faint, sweet chocolate under his tongue.

Grimmjow let him get mostly loose, panting a little into the curve of his neck and shoulder. Each gust was humid and ragged, ruffling the hair at his nape. Still pressed against his naked upper body, because he was an idiot who’d given his shirt to his sister, Grimmjow tried to swallow so hard his Adam’s apple rolled against Ichigo’s skin.

“Kurosaki,” he said hoarsely, “you’re not gonna believe this, but I think I’ve eaten a love potion.”

Ichigo could have cried. His lips were tingling. Everything was tingling, and he couldn’t bring himself to pull back far enough to see the expression Grimmjow no doubt had on his face.

“I think so too,” Ichigo said with what he felt was admirable calm, because of course this was his life. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Grimmjow. You want to kill Urahara when this is all over?”

“If you want me to,” was the horrible, messed up reply. It would have actually been worse if Grimmjow hadn’t followed it up by biting the juncture of his shoulder and neck with his stupid pointy canine teeth right after. “Hey just so we’re totally clear, are you for or against me shoving my tongue up your a—”

Ichigo tuned the entire rest of that sentence out in pure, white knuckled desperation. In fact, his entire world washed out in white static, because Grimmjow was in love with him and apparently, it wasn’t the sweet, eyelash batting type of love. It was the kiss-him-stupid-and-probably-offer-a-rimjob-if-that-was-what-he’d-heard-correctly kind of love.

Right, because Urahara wanted him to get laid.

There was no way in hell Ichigo was going to fuck Grimmjow—and  _especially_  not while he was drugged to his stupid little pinchy frowny eyebrows and out of his fucking mind. No. There was no way. It would be morally wrong. But if he told Grimmjow that, his hollow hole might crack open in guilty hurt and kill him on the spot. Which left Ichigo caught between his conscience and a really hard…place.

Feeling Grimmjow go from biting to sucking on his neck, remembering that was where all the blood had been, Ichigo felt like his entire reality was dissolving inside of a few minutes.

“Let’s, uh, find you somewhere to sleep tonight. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go back to Urahara’s.”

“Whatever. Am I tasting tea-tree oil and blood?”

On the bright side, he wouldn’t have to worry about Grimmjow talking to his sisters now.


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, tell it back to me from the top.”

From his sprawled position on the guest futon, Grimmjow gave Ichigo a look of pure petulance. The fact that it was petulance and not homicide said Urahara’s potion was still alive and out in force. Settling into a position of spread-knee casual insolence, Grimmjow switched his frown to the ceiling of the Kurosaki living room and braced himself on a single elbow.

“No kissing. No sexual touching. Nothing remotely affectionate, because I wouldn’t normally do that and I might try to kill you later in embarrassment. And a special note: no more offers to eat your ass.” Grimmjow’s frown folded down into a full-face scrunch of confusion. “Who the fuck has a problem being asked that, I don’t fuckin’ know. No wonder Kisuke gave you those little life-ruiners. Emphasis on my life being the ruined one. You’re already in the trash.”

Ichigo shuffled forward on his knees until he was pressed almost to the edge of the futon.

“You sound almost normal, but your estigma is still orange. It could be wearing off.”

“It’s not,” Grimmjow almost groaned, dropping his elbow so his head hit the pillow. “Your mouth still looks like one of those plush little peach gummies Urahara sells for double the price of the other shit. Why do I even have that fuckin’ information? Fuck the living world. I hate that you hate me. I feel like I’m being gutted with a rusty sword every time I look at you.”

Ichigo exhaled in a low, controlled rush. Telling Grimmjow he didn’t hate him might actually encourage him, but staying silent might just hurt him more. Deciding that things were as bad as they were bound to get, he rocked back onto his ass and sat cross-legged at the side of the futon. Reaching out, he patted Grimmjow’s bony wrist in what might, on an alien planet, be construed as a comforting manner. With an elbow thrown over his eyes, Grimmjow just frowned even harder.

“I don’t know why you think I’m so disgusting. I haven’t even killed anyone you like.”

“You’re not disgusting,” Ichigo said automatically.

“Then I’m ugly. Is it the mask? Because I can take that off.”

“It’s not the—what?” Ichigo blinked hard. “You can? No, you can’t.”

Grimmjow’s only response was to grab his jawbone and pull it an entire foot away from his cheek, revealing a smear of skin slightly paler than the rest of his face. When he let the mask go, it snapped back like a rubber band. Mystified, Ichigo grabbed it and pulled hard, accidentally yanking Grimmjow headfirst into his lap when it didn’t give.

Nose to Ichigo’s denim-covered crotch, Grimmjow squinted up at him.

“You give off a lot of mixed messages.”

“Sorry,” Ichigo said hastily, flinching and shoving Grimmjow back to his original position. “I just didn’t know you could remove—and anyway, these rules are all so you don’t try to murder me when the stupid potion wears off. It’s just damage control.” Watching Grimmjow flop back down in disappointment onto the futon in a cloud of vaguely musty-scented bedding, Ichigo couldn’t help but frown. “Don’t you remember hating me?”

“Never hated you.”

“That’s just the drug talking,” Ichigo said patiently. “Before today, you used to talk about gutting me like a fat, glittery orange koi. Actual quote.”

“Never hated you,” Grimmjow said again with emphasis. “The best hunt never lets you have it easy. You’re a goal, Kurosaki. Nothin’ to do with hate.” Settling fully onto his back, weird long toes spreading out like tiny little fingers for an instant as he stretched, Grimmjow the fearsome and terrible arrancar blinked morosely at the painted ceiling and all its little down-lights in pensive thought. “Couldn’t hate you for coming to save your friends. Just hope you don’t hate me for bein’ there to stop you.”

Ichigo bit down on his lip like it could stop him from what he wanted to say. It was right there, right on the tip of his tongue, to tell Grimmjow he didn’t hate him. But Ichigo had no convenient veil of science and potions to explain away his words when all was said and done.

They’d been trying to sort out the rules and impulses for the last two hours, after a sparse dinner mostly involving Yuzu telling them all to cook instant ramen and toast while she laid on the couch with a bag of frozen corn on her mouth. Isshin had put out their guest futon against the far wall of the living room—after laughing for a minute straight about the love potion, knowing it meant his darling girls were safe—but it hadn’t been used in so long it smelled kinda weird with disuse. Grimmjow didn’t seem to care, settling on it like it was his own personal island of bedding and flat pillows. Just then, he was thrown onto his side in a boneless sprawl, frowning at Ichigo through disheveled blue tendrils of hair.

“Looking at you makes my gut hurt,” Grimmjow said finally. His eyes slid from Ichigo’s face to a middle distance of morose self-pity. “Go to bed or something. Not like I’m gonna force you to love me.”

It was definitely Ichigo’s cue to leave. Yuzu and Karin had gone upstairs just after dinner, though Karin had insisted she wanted to try out the hollow taser on Grimmjow ‘just to see if it worked’. Grimmjow, already looking like someone had tased him in his soul, hadn’t even threatened to kill her. He was taking the whole love potion thing pretty hard, actually. What had initially seemed like a horrible problem for Ichigo looked more like the most miserable day of Grimmjow’s life. Was unrequited love that bad? It looked bad.

“What’s it feel like?” Ichigo asked hesitantly, instead of leaving like an intelligent person would. “Being…in love.” Grimmjow’s brow creased even further. His eyes didn’t open.

“Don’t start telling me you don’t know what love is. I’ve seen you screaming about how much you care about your shitty friends.” Another quick, quiet flinch pulled his knees up slightly. “Quit tormenting me. Fuckin’ sicko.” He folded up like an accordion after that, his face turning down onto the pillow in pain.

 _Be nice to him._ The old broken record of Urahara’s only advice kept repeating on him, but Ichigo didn’t know what nice even meant. He wasn’t being unfriendly, or rude, and they weren’t making him sleep on the floor. Ichigo wasn’t going to kiss him or anything to make him feel better, because love potions were only temporary and he had a full life he wanted to live someday. So…what the hell was nice? Touching his hollow hole again? His cheeks heated, the idea all confused with Grimmjow and his stupid tongue offer.

Reaching out carefully, Ichigo hovered his hand over Grimmjow’s head. Inhaling a short breath through his nose, he lowered it until his fingers sank into messy blue strands. Startled eyes popped open unseeingly, the orange estigma moving with the sudden motion. Ichigo ignored it. His head felt kinda warm, under his hair. Stomach rigid with nerves, he waited to be punched or slapped away. Instead, Grimmjow’s whole body unwound in a relieved sigh. The pain smoothed out of his brow, his legs stretching down until he was a long line of black on Ichigo’s old red racecar quilt.

For a long, oddly peaceful moment, neither of them spoke. Ichigo let his fingers wander through the strands of hair that fell between them, sinking down to find the warm smoothness of his scalp between the soft lengths of disheveled blue. His hair was kinda long, Ichigo realised, when it fell down out of the upswept wildness he usually had it in. There was a faint crunch of some kind of product in it, actually. Hopefully not his own saliva or something gross. The idea that Grimmjow was a little bit vain about his looks in some way cheered Ichigo.

“It’s like stopping and really looking for once.” Grimmjow was looking up at him through that same mess of hair. “Seeing all the shit you passed by in laser focus. Except I’m a hollow, aren’t I? And every shitty thing I ever did to you is ripping me open, and you keep saying you don’t want me.” He turned his face down into the pillow again and scowled. “So I’m stuck here, counting the same five freckles on your face and trying to pick if your eyes are gold or brown for the rest of my life. Might as well just show some mercy and kill me.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Ichigo replied, unable to hold down his smile. “It’ll wear off, and then you’ll realise it was all just chemicals messing with your brain and I’m still the same asshole shinigami substitute you want to disembowel.” He drew his fingers out of Grimmjow’s hair and patted his shoulder. “And for the record, my eyes are mud brown and I don’t have any freckles.” He let his hand drift away. If he was feeling better it’d probably be okay to leave him for the night.

Ichigo felt more than saw the hands that shot out of grab his sides, lifting him with insulting ease and thumping him down on the futon, his head hitting the pillow where Grimmjow’s had been a moment before. Suddenly his vision was full of Grimmjow’s wicked sharp-toothed smile, forearms on either side of Ichigo’s head. His whole body was pinning him down, warm and heavy on his.

“No, see, I can see shit like that now,” Grimmjow insisted, squirming up until they were nose to nose. “This morning you had orange hair and brown eyes. Tonight you’re all like, fuckin’ shades of fire and gold and chocolate, and you’ve got exactly five little faded freckles, like someone tried to rub them away.” A cool fingertip touched his cheeks and nose lightly, slowly, in five different places. Ichigo just tried to breathe. “I don’t feel like I’m in love, Kurosaki. Just feel like I’m finally paying attention. You’re doin’ the rest.”

“I’m not,” Ichigo said weakly, heat creeping into the tips of his ears. Nobody had ever said anything like that to him before. Even if his rational brain knew exactly why the words were being said, some part of him had turned really warm and it just wasn’t his embarrassment-flushed ears. “You’re just tripping love potion balls.”

“I’ll prove it,” Grimmjow said, reaching down to grab Ichigo’s hand and slapping it on his unmasked cheek. “Take a good look at me. Like, a real, proper look. It won’t work for you the same, but I bet you my boots you start noticing some shit. Look at me like you’ve never seen me before.”

They really, really shouldn’t be doing anything like that, Ichigo thought, fingertips hesitating on the side of Grimmjow’s face. Especially not while Grimmjow was obliviously pinning him to the futon while he tried to make his point. But it wasn’t really anything perverted, he supposed. Trying not to sigh right into Grimmjow’s mouth, Ichigo blinked a few times and looked up into his expectant face.

“I guess…your skin looks pretty smooth? Feels kinda smooth,” he added, rubbing his fingertips over the high curve of his cheekbone. Grimmjow’s eyes rolled a little, but snapped back to his almost immediately. Distracted by the movement, Ichigo frowned up at him. “Oh sorry, am I doing this wrong? Asshole. I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Grimmjow tensed down the length of him, just once, just for a second. Oh, right, the pain. But he didn’t mention it, or otherwise give any indication he was rebuking himself. Deciding to ignore it for his pride’s sake, Ichigo gave in and started looking at his face for real.

If someone asked him last week, Ichigo could rattle off who Grimmjow was like a list. Blue hair, bluer eyes, green markings. Jaw mask, hole through his middle. White and black and steel. Sharp teeth and a sharper laugh. That was Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. Or at least, it was the one Ichigo had always known. Cruelty and cleverness. Always sneering at him.

It made the person laying on top of him seem like a total stranger. Warm weight, almost too heavy to bear, just a bit longer than he was. Bare feet touching his socks. The skin under his hand was smooth, kind of pale but not in a sickly way, just like he didn’t get as much sun as Ichigo did. Nothing tanned under a Hueco Mundo moon. Ichigo let his eyes wander.

The jaw mask was the jaw mask; white, smooth, each tooth perfect and unchipped. Amazing really, for an arrancar that fought so hard and so often. Ichigo reached up with his other hand and tugged it lightly, again—and this time Grimmjow’s eyes slid to it and focused. It pulled away from his skin with a little resistance, like it didn’t really want to come. Calloused fingertips grabbed it out of his hand, freeing his fingers so he could poke at the newly-revealed cheek. The skin there was firm and smooth, a little paler than the rest of his face. There was a small line of whitish scarring there, like the teeth had closed on his cheek more than once. It made a fluttering, jagged curve that stretched to his ear, almost invisible even in full overhead light.

“Huh,” Ichigo breathed, stroking his fingertips over the pearl-like shine of scar tissue. “Cool.” He pulled the mask out of Grimmjow’s hand and carefully put the two pieces back where they belonged, feeling the tug back to his cheek like they’d missed it in its absence. When he lifted his eyes, Grimmjow was gazing down at him in pleased, confounded wonder. Remembering what Grimmjow had said about Ichigo’s eyes, he squinted up into the wide blue above his and tried to find something new. Surely he’d looked into those eyes enough that he had them memorised. They were always glaring at each other across the battlefield, after all.

Maybe the new orange markings made them bluer, but they did look a lot more vivid than before. Then again, they were about five inches away, which was a lot closer than they’d ever been. Ichigo squinted, trying to ignore the way Grimmjow’s pupils were trembling as he moved his head slightly, a green-gold circle in the back of his eye flashing as it reflected the light. They were sort of a mixture of dark and lighter blue, flecks of it surrounding the darkness of his pupil. His eyelashes were pretty dark, too, framing them like a short, spiky brush. If he didn’t glare so much they’d be kind of nice. Leaning up a little in sudden interest, Ichigo tilted his jaw a little, just up into the right light.

“Huh. There,” he said, a little triumphant that he could spot dumb details too. “There’s just a tiny bit of teal in the blue, but I never noticed til the orange was—” Kissing him! God damn it. Grimmjow laughed against Ichigo’s mouth, almost burrowing down onto him with his lips alone. Unfortunately, even his annoyance at being tricked couldn’t quite smother the little voice that said the kiss felt really kind of nice. The kind of kiss he’d say yes to, if it wasn’t the result of mind-altering drugs.

Fuck.

“Sucker,” Grimmjow said when he finally pulled away, still snickering at his own cleverness. “Don’t let your guard down so quickly.” He bit at Ichigo’s fingers when he tried to push his face away, then got two of them in his mouth. He did let Ichigo pull them back out though, and lifted his weight away when he tried to get up off the futon. He fell back into the space Ichigo had left, almost rolling in the warm spot his body had made. Jeez.

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to do any of that…stuff,” Ichigo said, knowing he sounded like a prude but having no idea how to stop it. “It’s not right, Grimmjow. You’re not you at the moment.”

Grimmjow just shrugged. “The way I figure, you’re only to blame if you encourage it. It’s not taking advantage of me if I’m the one tricking your dumb ass, right? I can’t blame you for it later if it’s my fault.”

“And yet, I know you’ll find a way,” Ichigo said flatly. “So, thanks in advance, Grimmjow. I’m going to bed.” Getting back to his feet, he flipped the living room lights and skirted the coffee table, heading to the dim glow of the hallway where the stairwell light was left on. He could still taste Grimmjow’s wriggly little tongue in his mouth. Worse, it didn’t repulse him. Not at all.

“Wait, wait—ow, _fuck_ ,” Grimmjow said, smashing into the coffee table from the sound of it, “don’t leave me down here on bad terms, I’ll snap in half like a brittle fucking bone if you don’t forgive me.”

“That’s emotional blackmail,” Ichigo snapped, even more pissed off that he was right. “I hope you cramp so hard you shit your stupid jumpsuit and fly out the window.”

“Ah, hell.” The footsteps behind him stopped. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. Sorry.”

Ichigo almost tripped over his sock and fell up the bottom step. “You’re sorry?”

“Well, yeah.” Grimmjow sounded so hangdog about it that Ichigo turned to squint at him suspiciously. He was just standing there in the darkened room, shoulders slumped. Without his belts and sword to break up the black, he just looked like a disembodied head and a couple of pale arms. “I like kissing you, but I don’t like it more than I want you to like me. And we were just kind of getting friendly, too. I’m an asshole.” He sounded so genuinely remorseful about it that Ichigo was more startled out of his annoyance than moved to forgiveness. Damn it.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ichigo said wearily. “You’re not really yourself. But don’t do it again.”

A moment of hesitation. Then, “I won’t. Ever. Promise.”

“Thanks, Grimmjow. Maybe get some sleep now, huh? And yell out if you start…breaking in half again.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Ichigo.” He retreated back on soundless bare feet, but there wasn’t anything happy or relieved in his movements.

“Goodnight.” He headed up the stairs.

It took one shower, ten minutes of staring at his eyes in the mirror, being walked in on by Karin who desperately needed to pee and finally a confused collapse into bed alongside Kon before it sank in.

Firstly, that Grimmjow had called him Ichigo, like it was nothing at all. Like he was really that sorry and sincere.

Secondly, Ichigo hadn’t felt relieved when he’d given him his word not to ever kiss him again. He’d felt something a lot more pitiful: disappointment.

Fuck.

Love potions really were a pain in the ass.

 

* * *

 

Call it cowardice or strategy, but Ichigo had strong intentions not to get out of bed the next morning until he absolutely had to. He was going to put off having to deal with Grimmjow and his affliction for as long as possible. That was the plan. And like all plans, it instantly went to shit the moment Ichigo started hearing voices from downstairs.

Happy voices.

“What is that infernal giggling?” Kon grumbled, trying to shove his plush head under the pillow. “Is it someone’s birthday? What time is it?”

Ichigo squinted up at his desk clock. “Just before nine. I’ve got a bad feeling, Kon.”

“Yeah, well, you have a lovesick arrancar camped out downstairs.” The words came from the dark cave he was carving out under the pillow. “Literally lovesick, in case I didn’t use enough emphasis there. That doesn’t explain why Yuzu and Karin sound like they’re having the time of their lives down there. Isn’t he a murderous cannibal?”

Good point. “All right, I’m up.”

Whether it was vanity or just delaying the inevitable, Ichigo did stop to get changed and brush his teeth and hair before going down there. He still couldn’t see any fucking freckles. What kind of creepy vision did Grimmjow even have? Smoothing his hair—his plain orange hair—down into its usual controlled spikes, Ichigo silently cursed Urahara’s talent for fucking up his life once more before heading down the hall to the stairs. Sure enough, the laughter was bright and silvery, which would be okay coming from Yuzu but it was Karin too. That meant…bad things.

“Look at this!” That was definitely Yuzu. “More blue would be too much, but a nice vibrant peach with an earthy nude blend up to your brow line? It’s amazing. Look how it brings out your eyebrows. You want a metallic brush across the lids too? Nothing too flashy.”

“I still say a smoky eye would be sexier, but I guess it’s not really 10pm.” Karin. “I say go flashy.”

“I’m okay with flashy.” And _that_ was Grimmjow. Ichigo leapt off the last five steps and commando rolled into the hall, coming up with his jeans halfway down his ass as he ran into the living room. God, he already knew what he was going to find, because he’d been in that chair before. As it was, Ichigo was still barely prepared for the sight that waited for him.

Right in the middle of the living room floor, backed up against the side of the stripped and folded futon, sat Grimmjow in what Ichigo could only call schoolgirl lingerie and makeup.

And he looked...interesting.

Everything was too small for him, so Yuzu and Karin had mixed their clashing sixteen year old girl wardrobes and come out with black thigh-high lacetop stockings, which were tight enough that they held themselves up. An electric blue miniskirt didn’t even come close to grazing them, luckily falling between his thighs so the girls didn’t get an eyeful of Pantera junior. Up top they’d thrown on what looked like a hastily butchered black satin robe, tied up like a midriff top with a knot in the centre. One of his own white belts was completing the bizarre picture, holding the skirt in place.

At least his hollow hole looked fine, Ichigo noted distantly.

The clothes weren’t even the weirdest part of it. The girls were cooing over how well his face took foundation, or something. Grimmjow didn’t even look bothered about it, instead flipping through a large book in his lap that had hard cardboard pages.

“You hardly need any upkeep,” Karin was saying, plucking a few stray eyebrow hairs. Grimmjow barely blinked. “It’s like you were drawn with a sharp pencil by god himself. Do all arrancar have this kind of bone structure? Can I become one?”

“Not worth it. Lot of eating raw meat, running for your life, plus first you gotta die in misery with nobody to save you. Normal shit. Keep your button nose.” Grimmjow pointed at something on the page. “This one says ‘friends with Tatsuki-chan’ but it looks like he’s bawling his eyes out. And I’m pretty sure that’s blood.”

Yuzu peered down at the page. “We were only little when a lot of these were done, but the story is that Ichi-nii used to cry a lot as a kid. I think that looks like Mama’s handwriting, actually, but you’d have to ask.” Humming to herself, she went back to applying something shimmery to Grimmjow’s eyelids.

Frowning at the book, Grimmjow held his eyelid down while she did her work.

“Where is she?”

Everyone went still. Ichigo held his breath for an instant, just long enough for Grimmjow to look up in the silence and spot him. He jerked his chin in greeting, utterly at ease in his new space.

“Morning.”

“Hey,” Ichigo said easily, and the tension vanished like it had never been. He looked at the photo Grimmjow was looking at. Yeah, that was one of the dojo pictures; crying, like always. Tatsuki was rubbing her fist and trying not to look concerned for him. Probably six months before Grand Fisher appeared and Yhwach took the quincy powers back. His mother’s fingertip was in the top right of the photo, blurred out and pink.

“Mom died years ago,” Ichigo said. It had been a long time since he’d been afraid to talk about her. “Did you trade your soul for that photo album? Never haggle with Yuzu, man. I’m pretty sure Satan has her on back-order.”

“Makeup is for everyone, you know. Don’t act like it’s a punishment to be meted out to fools,” Karin said drolly, swapping her tweezers out for a tiny little brush coated in something clear. Under Ichigo’s confounded eye, she started swiping it through Grimmjow’s eyebrows. “This will keep them in place all day.”

“Thanks,” Grimmjow said absently, still flipping slowly through the pages. Then, possessed by a sudden inspiration, he started flipping back through the ones he’d already viewed. He turned the album up to Ichigo. “Masaki. Right?”

Slowly, Ichigo knelt down beside him, his eyes full of the photo he was pointing at.

It was a solo photo, right at the front of the album. One of Isshin’s—one of Dad’s, taken before all the photos of himself began. She was standing in the afternoon sunshine of the backyard, squinting against the light and laughing. Her stomach was heavily rounded with the final weeks of pregnancy, and an off-screen person was grabbing the washing basket from her. She was very obviously trying to fight for it, hands weak with laughter. Beside it was a small inscription, written in a neat, careful script completely at odds with their father’s usual handwriting.

_Laundry fight with Masaki (and little Ichigo. But he was on my side.)_

“I’ve never seen this before,” Ichigo said wonderingly, swallowing hard. He turned it to the girls when they looked over his shoulder with interest. “I didn’t even know Dad kept photos of her other than the stupid memorial poster.”

Beside him, Grimmjow was leaning over to study the photo closely. He smelled like the fake fragrance of a hundred skincare products and hair oils. His perfectly highlighted eyes narrowed, but when he looked up at all three of them he blinked at their faces. One by one, he pointed at them.

“Hair.” Yuzu. “Jawline.” Karin. “Nose.” Ichigo. “Even the eyes in all of you, just a bit.” He nodded to himself. “She’s definitely your mother.”

The girls burst into tears. Karin didn’t even hold it in, just dropped her eyebrow wand and ran into the kitchen to find the tissues. Yuzu just stood there like a huge mess, her pink radish print pyjamas sagging off her shoulder. They’d dressed Grimmjow before bothering with themselves. Ichigo just smiled down into the photo, smoothing down the protective plastic film to make sure it was safe.

“Hey,” Grimmjow was saying, shoving him in the side. “I didn’t say anything bad, and it wasn’t potion shit so you can’t get angry. You can’t fucking yell at me for having two working eyes.”

“Nobody’s mad at you,” Ichigo said, clearing his throat around the tightness. “They just…Mom died when they were pretty young. Isshin tells stories about her to them, but it’s not the same as hearing it from a stranger.” When Grimmjow just stared at him in defensive confusion, still ready to argue, Ichigo gave him back the photo album and all its horrible, embarrassing childhood photos. If they were going to wade through the whole mess of embarrassing blackmail material, they might as well do it on equal footing. “Thanks for saying that, Grimmjow. And letting them give you a makeover. They’re never going to want you to leave now.”

“I can stay,” Grimmjow said, shrugging like it was nothing. “I’ll stay til you don’t want me to anymore.” Ichigo could have kissed his peach-glossed mouth then and there. Too bad it was just chemicals and lies.

Instead, he grabbed the knot on his bathrobe midriff top and pulled, unraveling the whole thing. Then he squinted.

“Did they blush your nipples?”

Grimmjow just covered his chest. “Don’t look. I sacrificed a lot to get my fuckin’ eyes on this photo album. You weren’t kidding about your sisters being hard to bargain with.” When he saw Ichigo’s watering eyes, he scowled even harder. “Fuck off. Get it out of your system already.”

Ichigo did. He laughed so hard that Isshin wandered in with the newspaper and asked nervously if there’d been a gas leak from the clinic.

Kind of a weird morning.

But definitely a good one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a mess in three parts! three! i don't know what a word count is!
> 
> anyway mad thanks to trevo for inspiring grimmjow's munch cheek scar with her feathery design. i didn't know i needed it until the mask was coming off in that exact paragraph. she is like the ancestor of all my ideas and i keep appropriating her like a cheap bitch
> 
> happy ridiculously extended valentine's day everyone


	3. Chapter 3

**[Sandal-Hat]:** _Is he showing any adverse side-effects? Eyeball bleeding? Memory loss? Homicidal mood swings? (I’m joking about that last one, we all know he’s a frothing psychopath.)_

Ichigo stared at the text for so long the letters swam around. Frothing psychopath, huh. He looked down at his lap, where a familiar blue head was using him as a cushion.

“That’s not realistic,” Grimmjow was saying drowsily at the TV screen, pointing at a guy getting knifed in the stomach. “That’s nowhere near the artery. He’d die a slow death, not just collapse straight away. Kurosaki, back me up here.”

“I don’t really know where trunk arteries are.”

Grimmjow choked. “Fuck, I could have been killed in Hueco Mundo? I thought you let me live on purpose.”

“I just…figured you probably wouldn’t die. Because you were strong.”

“Well,” he fumed, “I am, but shit. Have a bit of care, dickhead.” He immediately crimped up on the couch in pain until Ichigo petted his shoulder. “When is this potion supposed to wear out? It’s been a day and a half. I’m sick of loving you already.” More foetal position moaning. “All right, it’s a lie. I like how your dick smells and the way your eyes upturn when you’re happy. Fuck! I’m still under it.”

“Stop smelling my dick,” Ichigo said loudly, trying to shove him out of his lap. Karin and Yuzu cracked up from their cushions on the floor. At the dining table, Isshin just stared at them over his patient notes and sighed.

It had been almost two days, actually, and Grimmjow had shown no signs of coming out of his drugged haze of affection. Kon had even come down to witness the spectacle, wearing his little Hugh Hefner robe and passing judgement on them all as hopeless. Harsh words for a stuffed lion, really. He’d already had his own altercation with Grimmjow, mostly in the form of jealous posturing when Kon said way too proudly that he slept with Ichigo every night. It probably didn’t have that much effect and was more annoying than anything, since plush dolls didn’t exactly have the equipment to be a threat. They’d muttered at each other for a while until Ichigo had said in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t interested in sleeping with either of them.

A lie, but sometimes circumstances demanded a peacemaker.

Facts were, Grimmjow was an easy addition to the house, and inside of two days he’d endeared himself to the twins, Ichigo, and as of a few hours ago Isshin had formally said he might as well stick around, since he ate nothing, could protect the house and had Urahara in his pocket for black market goods. He fit really well, since he’d stopped being a physical threat to Ichigo’s libido and just kind of liked to be near him. Most of the life-threatening hollow hole problems had stopped as a result, too. In no time at all, the family had generally shrugged and figured Grimmjow was theirs now. Easy.

Ichigo tapped out a reply to the text.

 _No side-effects. Just the pain, but I’m managing it._ He smoothed a fingertip over the shell of Grimmjow’s ear as the message sent, snorting when he curled away from it and grabbed his hand. The smile faded a little when lips brushed his knuckles. Not a kiss, and not sexual, but…definitely something. Something Grimmjow never would have done before. Not ever.

The phone dinged again.

 **[Sandal-Hat]:** _Don’t get attached, Kurosaki-san. He’s just a bit of fun. Like Cinderella and her carriage, he’ll turn back into a pumpkin before long._

The words squeezed his stomach like a vice. Urahara had a lot of nerve warning him about the temporary effects of the very love potion he’d made and tricked Grimmjow into taking. Locking his phone and tossing it down the other end of the couch where Grimmjow’s feet were tucked up, Ichigo very resolutely ploughed his fingers into Grimmjow’s messy hair, letting him nuzzle his nose into the space between his knees all he wanted.

“I didn’t like this movie,” Ichigo said as the final credits eventually started to roll. “Let’s watch something else.”

Karin brought up the menu. “Okay, we’ve got…Venom, The Shape of Water, and How To Train Your Dragon. Oh,” she said, hitting buttons on the remote, “who downloaded Alien versus Predator?”

A small argument broke out until Isshin said he thought it was the porn parody, which shut them all up in horror.

Karin chose the dragon movie in the end, and Ichigo spent the next ninety minutes watching a teenager raised to hate an entire race very slowly come to defend it while earning the affections of its most feared legend.

Well, fuck.

Grimmjow watched the entire thing from his sideways position on Ichigo’s lap, his eyes unblinkingly fixed and intense. His estigma was the colour of sunset, seeming brighter than ever.

They didn’t talk about it later, and Ichigo was glad.

Pumpkins and carriages, after all.  
  


* * *

   
On the fourth night, Ichigo was shook awake by his shoulders.

“Oi, Kurosaki,” a voice hissed in the dark, instantly familiar and close. “Smelling about three plus souls near the house.”

“Mm, so what?” Ichigo said thickly, lulled by the warmth of the hands through his t-shirt. “S’just pluses. They always come.”

“Yeah, well one of them feels like a potential.” The hands rubbed down his upper arms, keeping him awake. “You’ve got about two minutes before hollows bust through to sniff it out. You wanna do your shinigami thing, right? Send ‘em up?”

“Yeah…” Ichigo sat up, yawning hard. The words all sank in where they should have from the start. Grimmjow’s hands moved to the knobbly line of his back, running over it like holes in a flute. He fumbled around and grabbed Kon, pulling his soul pill out. The rest was easy.

“You’re good at sensing these things so early,” Ichigo said a minute later, standing outside the house, watching a small cluster of plus souls look at them fearfully. The night air was cold, almost icy. “I don’t think they like you much.”

Grimmjow just pulled back to the fence in one long backward stride. There was no fear or concern in his face. Nor should there be, Ichigo thought. There weren’t any hollows left who could challenge him. Not any who might hunt a few souls, anyway.

“Make ‘em rest in peace, shinigami. I’ll kill anything that comes through.” He didn’t bother to draw his sword. Ichigo almost smiled.

He had two out of the three sent to Soul Society via konsou when the third backed away from him, babbling about infernal fires and shoplifting forty years ago. Trying not to roll his eyes, he took the old woman’s shoulder and was halfway to convincing her it was okay when the blue night ripped open black around them.

Flaring his reiatsu would be enough to kill the hollow coming through, Ichigo knew. He also knew he couldn’t do it without basically evaporating the old lady. Shoving her hunched body under one arm, apologising for the rough treatment, he leapt back for enough distance to give a decent sword stroke—and Grimmjow jumped in, hands contorted into black velvet claws. Ichigo didn’t need to see what became of the hollow after that.

“You’re going to be fine,” he told the woman, using his black and white half-robe to help her wipe her frightened tears. “I promise. It can be kind of confusing at first, but if you hate it they’ll reincarnate you in no time at all. You can do it all again.”

“Again?” she breathed, her voice small. Her craggy face shone with fresh tears. “But I’ll forget my children.”

“Then stay there a while,” he said, dabbing her cheeks again with the cloth. “Work it all out for yourself. And when you’re ready, they’ll let you start again. But the first step is knowing you already gave this lifetime everything you had.”

It took her another few moments of sniffling and deep breathing, pulling herself together, but finally she tilted her head up to meet his konsou seal, blind eyes clearing into wonder as the light engulfed her. Kind of nice, really. Definitely worth waking up in the night for.

“If you hadn’t woken me up that hollow would have eaten them all,” Ichigo said after the light had faded, resting his sword on his back and turning. Grimmjow was fifteen feet away, cleaning blood off his claws with his tongue. “Is that sanitary?”

“Who am I gonna be kissing?” Grimmjow shot back meaningfully, licking his pink teeth back to white. “C’mon, let’s go inside. I’m tired, and your bed looks good.”

“Uh, my bed is mine.”

“Yeah, but since I saved the day, I get to sleep in it with you.”

“How do you figure?” Ichigo asked, his lips twitching. “There’s no way you can sleep in it without breaking our rules.”

“It’ll be non-affectionate spooning. Enemy spooning.” Prowling right up to get in Ichigo’s face, Grimmjow smiled with teeth that glinted like knives. It was the least safe he’d looked inside of the last four days. “With potential to wake up with my enemy dick pressing against your enemy ass.”

Ichigo stared at him, momentarily having no idea what to say to the concept of enemy spooning. In the same instant, all of Grimmjow’s predatory energy vanished, his expression softening into something a little defeated.

“I’ll just sleep on your floor,” he said, snorting at his own ridiculous proposition. “C’mon, it’s fuckin’ cold and I left the window open.”

They went back inside hastily, but by the time Ichigo was back in his own body and tucked under his blankets, the words all properly sank in. Love might be love, and lust might be lust, but their rules while the potion rode itself out didn’t mean one could be switched off in favour of the other. Grimmjow still wanted to be in his bed, wanted to kiss him, wanted to touch his skin. But the love part, it was different. It was going to obey his wishes, even to the detriment of the other.

So was it a love potion, or a lust one? Was it a combination of the two?

Leaning over the side of the bed, Ichigo looked at the floor. There was nobody there, because even that was too close when Grimmjow thought he wasn’t welcome. And he wasn’t, it was always going to come down to the drug, but…

Oh, fuck it. Ichigo pulled back the sheets and shivered his way out into the hall and down the stairs.

“Kurosaki?” Grimmjow muttered as Ichigo knelt down by the futon, pressing down on the lump he made up under the blankets. “What is it?”

Ichigo caught the edge of the blanket with his fingertips and tugged it down a couple of inches.

“You got any room in there? I’m freezing.”

Grimmjow actually hesitated. “There’s room, but…”

“You don’t want me?” Want me _to_ _,_ Ichigo hissed inside his own head. _Want me to._ Grimmjow’s flashlight eyes caught the faint hint of light from the kitchen rangehood, wide and confused. “Hey, forget it, go back to sleep.”

A hand yanked his wrist, too-tight and still damp from washing blood off in the sink.

“Get in. I’m plenty warm.”

It felt like an intrusion, getting into Grimmjow’s bed, even if the sheets were the same ones he’d used when he was eight. But the blankets were instantly warm on his cold skin, setting his teeth to chattering a little when Grimmjow pulled them up around their shoulders, sealing them together in a cocoon of body heat, stomach to stomach on the old futon. It felt familiar and safe and warm and soft, right there in the silence as shivering gave way to slow shudders, and then nothing at all. For a while, they just breathed together, both awake and too aware of each other to think about sleeping.

Quietly, hesitantly, a hand slid over Ichigo’s waist until it became an entire arm, keeping him tugged in close. Affection, breaking their rules. Closing his eyes in the almost-darkness, Ichigo did absolutely nothing about it. It felt good, being pulled in like that. The weight over his side wasn’t demanding or trying to trick him this time. It was just there, the same way the brush of his hair touched Ichigo’s forehead as he settled more comfortably on the pillow. The air between them smelled like faint laundry powder and…Karin’s sakura moisturiser?

“She’s going to kill you for using that,” Ichigo said in the space between their mouths, sniffing his cheek in amusement. Grimmjow just reached up to pull off his mask, irritated by the way it dug into the pillow. He replaced it with Ichigo’s open palm, and daringly left his fingers wrapped around his wrist afterwards. The bruises there were mostly yellowing since the day in the clinic, but the pressure over them was still careful. “I’ll lose feeling in my hand soon, you know. Your head weighs a lot.”

“Feels better to have your hand than the pillow there,” was all Grimmjow said, rubbing his cheek into Ichigo’s palm. Ichigo was sure for a moment there he could feel the pale scar slide across his skin. “Feels a lot better.”

“You could just sleep on your other side.”

“Usually do. But I’d rather face this way.” Grimmjow didn’t elaborate, but his thumb dragged down the raised tendon in Ichigo’s wrist. “Shut up and go to sleep.”

It seemed like good advice, especially when he could feel every aborted jaw clench Grimmjow was doing against his palm, like he was trying not to say anything more. Ichigo could only imagine what that might be. Instead of obeying and pretending to sleep while his mind raced with variations of _should I be fucking doing this_ _,_ Ichigo brought his free hand up between them and touched the winged orange estigma that swept below the corner of his eye. It felt as smooth and warm as the rest of his skin. Oddly, Ichigo felt surprised it didn’t smear under his fingertip. But of course it wouldn’t. It was part of him.

“Doesn’t it freak you out that the drug did this to you? Do you miss the green?”

“Teal,” Grimmjow said automatically. “And I don’t know. Orange ain’t so bad. Looks all right on you.” When Ichigo didn’t immediately have anything to say to that, the hand on his back twitched a little, brushing his t-shirt in light, barely there little lines. It didn’t feel unwelcome, or bad, so Ichigo wasn’t worried when Grimmjow shifted in a bit closer. He’d promised, anyway. “You warm now?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He made no move to get back out. “How’s your uh…hole? No pain?”

“Hole’s fine. Any time I get you this close is the highlight of my fuckin’ day.” Between them, Grimmjow’s fingers were dragging down his wrist and back up again in a shallow, deliberate stoke. They were long enough to encircle his entire wrist in a light grip. “This hurt?”

“No,” Ichigo said, his thumb moving over Grimmjow’s cheekbone. Carefully, slowly, the circling fingers kept up their pace. There was something strange about the light in his eyes as Grimmjow’s hand moved, and it took Ichigo longer than he liked to realise the rhythmic motion of his hand was emulating touching a completely different part of his body. Heat pooled low in his stomach, and he couldn’t have stayed relaxed after that if he tried. Suggestive, clever, loophole-finding bastard. Seeing the comprehension hit him, Grimmjow turned his mouth into Ichigo’s palm. Still not a kiss.

“Roll over on your other side.” The words were hot in his hand. “You don’t have to do anything. Just let me.”

Ichigo liked to think he possessed more than the average person’s amount of determination and resolve. He’d needed to, just to survive as long as he had. But staring across the small distance between them in the near-darkness, feeling breath on his palm and strong fingers stroking his skin, knowing that all he had to do was move a little and Grimmjow would quietly press up behind him, it tested every fibre of that resolve. One twist of his body and Grimmjow would silently, carefully slide his hand down the loose waistband of his sweatpants and wrap warm fingers around the stirring length of him. No need to talk about it, or look at each other, or think too hard about it. He just wanted to do it for him. And, fuck, Ichigo wanted him to as well.

But Grimmjow’s eyes were still marked orange in the corners, and nothing he was saying sounded like the arrancar Ichigo knew.

Grimmjow barely liked Ichigo on a good day. That was the sad, cold truth of it. The last few days were just a nice holiday from that, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—take advantage of it.

Seeing the inevitable refusal in Ichigo’s face, he exhaled a short, almost fond breath of laughter through his nose. There was no rejection or disappointment, just a half-smile of disbelieving admiration.

“You’re the best person I know, Kurosaki,” he said, and it still somehow sounded like the saddest thing Ichigo had ever heard. “Get outta here. Get some proper sleep.” And he freed the hand under his cheek and pushed Ichigo out from under the blankets, like he was launching a boat into waters far from him.

Tumbling out onto the cold floorboards, startled and with ten half-formed apologies on his tongue, Ichigo came up on his knees in time to see Grimmjow flip back over onto his other side, still kind of snorting to himself.

“Fuckin’ actual saint.” Grimmjow sank down beneath the blankets until only the top of his head was visible. “Three doses of love potion in me and I’d die for you if you blinked twice, but it’s still not enough. If Kisuke really wanted to get you laid, he should have fed ‘em to you.”

“It’s not you,” Ichigo said warily, uncertain if he was angry or amused. “Really.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not really me, moral quandaries and fuckin’ integrity tests, blah blah.” Turning his head slightly, mask fixed back in place, Grimmjow gave him a narrowed glance that was more black than blue. “It’s hot. I love you. Now fuck off.”

_I love you._

Just like that.

Cheeks burning, Ichigo scrambled to his feet, ready to dart back to his room and process those three words from seventy different angles—but he stopped, turning back to the baffled lump Grimmjow made under the faded covers. He wasn’t angry, or upset. He just took it in stride, like it was just part of who Ichigo was. And he liked it, just like he liked everything else about him.

For just a quick, resentful second, Ichigo was bitterly jealous of whoever genuinely ended up earning Grimmjow’s feelings one day.

“Goodnight, Grimmjow.” His only reply was a long, exaggerated snore. Ichigo stuck his socked foot on the top of his head in retaliation and rubbed it there. “Dick. See you in the morning.”

“Careful, I might suck on your toes.” The hand that reached out for his ankle was intentionally too slow, Ichigo was sure of it. “Goodnight, Kurosaki.”

“Ichigo.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Shut up and sleep.”

Ichigo practically fled after that, steaming from his entire head in a confused mess of flustered irritation. What was he getting so worked up for? It was a drug. A potion. There wasn’t even a guarantee that what he was seeing was Grimmjow if he were ever to—to love someone. He’d been pretty adamant he couldn’t feel anything of the sort, at first. So Ichigo got right back into bed nodding to himself over that, still a little turned on in a worried, guilty kind of way. He yanked his covers back up, booted Kon to the end of the bed, slammed his head into the pillow and shut his eyes.

_I love you._

Ichigo’s eyes snapped open. The ceiling swam with shadows. He shut them again.

Sleep didn’t come for a long time.

He didn’t really expect it to.  
  


* * *

  
The morning split with a piercing scream of pure, gut-liquefying terror.

“Let her go! _You let her go!!_ ”

In bed, Ichigo’s eyes snapped open. “Yuzu!”

“Ichigo!” A thud, and a cry of choked fear. “Ichi-nii, help—!”

His entire body flooding with adrenaline and fear, Ichigo grabbed Kon and his pill by instinct more than intention as he jumped up, running out into the hall as he swallowed it. Kon fell out in his body in the hallway, gasping at the sudden transition. Ichigo didn’t care, hand on his sword and legs pounding down the stairs in three strides. If he wasn’t fast enough, if he wasn’t in time—

Ichigo rounded the corner of the stairwell and stopped dead, his heart in his throat.

Grimmjow was standing like a broken scarecrow, all strange joints and angles, his head down and teeth bared in a snarl. And he had Karin by the throat, lifted from the ground by his hand squeezing the fragile column of her neck.

She was already turning purple, and her eyes were staring blankly at the ceiling. The reiatsu coming off him was dragging all her limbs to the floor like a gravitational anchor.

“Let her go,” Ichigo said, his voice thin and stupid. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. “Let her go or I’ll kill you right here in my house.” On the far wall, Yuzu was gripping her stomach like something had hit her, saliva on her chin, tears soaking her cheeks and shirt. Oh fuck, he’d hurt Yuzu. Grimmjow had hurt his sisters.

In the centre of the room, pulling up his shoulders one by one until he could lift his head, Grimmjow squeezed his fingers tighter and turned to stare at Ichigo with the wide, blank animal eyes of a killer. Eyes he hadn’t seen since day one.

Beneath those feral, enraged eyes, his estigma burned a clear and terrifying green.

Grimmjow was back.

Beneath his arm, Karin’s legs were slowly stopping their weak swing.

The entrance hall door slammed open, and a man in a striped hat leveled two fingers at the centre of the room.

“Bakudou sixty-one: _Rikujoukourou!_ ”

Ichigo's hesitation splintered at the same time six rods of golden light rammed into Grimmjow’s midsection from all angles, punching through with so much force he dropped Karin like a broken doll on the floorboards and skidded back into the wall. Cracks spider-webbed out from his impact, mouth gaping in a stunned, airless gasp, but Ichigo was already running past Urahara and his kidou-raised fingertips, grabbing his sisters up in each arm and pulling them back behind the barrier of the kitchen cabinetry.

“Fuck, fuck,” Ichigo was practically panting in his freak-out, checking Karin’s vitals with trembling fingers. Her pulse felt sluggish but she was hauling breaths in like a drowning sailor finding the shore, her face slowly returning to something approaching its normal colour. Her left eye was blood red from broken vessels, telling him just how close she’d cut it. Her mouth was moving, whispering sounds that couldn’t form words yet.

Yuzu reached over and pulled her sister into her arms, still coughing. Her eyes had no contact lens on them, but she knew exactly who she was looking at when she spoke.

“Hurt him,” she said coldly, glaring through her tears. “Hurt him, Ichi-nii.”

Karin’s mouth was still moving in silence, but she grabbed Ichigo’s wrist. He shook it off quickly, already heading back into the living room. His heart felt like it was exploding in his chest. Where was Dad? What had happened?

“My apologies for the intrusion, Kurosaki-san, but I detected hollow aggression in levels I could not in good conscience ignore.” Urahara rotated his fingers slightly, and the kidou spell actually tightened around Grimmjow. Something snapped, or cracked inside him, and he roared against the wall in wordless pain. Ichigo flinched.

Defend his sisters. Defend Grimmjow. Stand and watch. He didn’t know which one was right or wrong. He should know which one was right or wrong.

“ _What did you do to me?!_ " Grimmjow snarled, fighting like a wild thing inside the barrier despite his injury. “Where the _fuck_ am I?!” Twisting to an almost spine-shattering angle, he wrenched an arm free. Claws shot out of a newly-black furred hand. His eyes lit on Ichigo and slitted into murderous, hateful shards of icy blue. “Kurosaki.” Those same claws began to glow with the beginning of an attack Ichigo knew too well.

“Urahara, let him go,” Ichigo said, whipping his head around. “You can’t punish him for this. This is your fault, not his.”

Urahara’s head tilted. “So it is, but he’s coming out of the influence of it in a very predatory manner. A confused panther still has its strength and its teeth, Kurosaki-san.”

Ichigo looked at Grimmjow, still trapped in the kidou binding that was holding him fixed to the wall. With both arms free, he could level the house. But Urahara said he wasn’t free of the drug yet. He had maybe seconds at most. If Grimmjow found his sword by the door and transformed, the house would be obliterated. Half the street would go with it.

“Grimmjow, you’re in my house,” Ichigo said tightly. “Nobody is attacking you. You’re freaking out from a drug. What do you remember?”

To his credit, Grimmjow’s face scrunched into a snarl, but relaxed minutely as he started to really see his surroundings. His glance switched to different places: floor, walls, kitchen, ceiling, Urahara, Ichigo. And—behind him, as well, where Karin was crawling out on her hands and knees, grabbing Ichigo’s black hakama. She had a brilliant red ring of pain around her throat, but her eyes were blazing.

“My…fault,” she rasped out, exploding into a series of coughs. “Woke him…up. Green. Not orange. Woke…him up anyway.” Panting, trying to swallow and shake Yuzu off, Karin stared up at Grimmjow and wiped spit off her lip. Her bloody eye was damning to look at, but she just blinked through it to look at him there, pinned like a butterfly against the wall. “Sorry.”

Amazingly, Grimmjow blinked at her, then blinked again. His eyes fell to her throat and widened. Then they found Ichigo’s face. He had no idea what he looked like, but from the cringe of confused pain that bent Grimmjow almost double over the penetrating light, it was bad. The fight went out of him in a rush.

“Fucking hell,” he gasped, almost forehead to kidou where he crumpled. “What the fuck has been happening to me?”

Ichigo tried to steel himself. “It was—”

“ _Love potion_ _,_ ” Grimmjow said suddenly, snapping back upright. Horror twisted his features. Instead of trying to attack, he just stared at Ichigo with the revolted expression of a person who’d remembered enough to be nauseated by it. Slowly, his eyes slid to Urahara. His skin was very pale. “You made me think I…wanted…Kurosaki. You disgusting fucking cockroach of a shinigami, you played with my head.”

Urahara just nodded. “Yes.”

Grimmjow’s mouth trembled, caught somewhere between sick horror and true betrayal. “Why? Why the fuck would you?”

For once, Urahara didn’t laugh or snap his fan open. He didn’t even really change expression.

“The same reason any scientist does anything, Grimmjow: I wanted to see if I could.” His head tilted. “And didn’t you just learn so much as a result?” With a flick of his hand, the kidou binding dissolved, leaving Grimmjow to hit the floor on his knees. He still had pillow print on his cheek, Ichigo noticed helplessly. Still barefoot, in nothing but his sleeveless jumpsuit. He’d been pressed up against that warm body five hours ago.

When Grimmjow finally looked up, clutching his ribs like he was holding them in, he looked at Ichigo with all the knowledge of the past four days. Sickened by the lies and trickery, knowing his part in them, Ichigo could only look right back.

Grimmjow’s eyes slid away in nauseated shame and fury. When he picked himself up, he looked thinner, and pale. The winged green markings under his eyes stood out like brands.

“If I ever see any of you again,” he said quietly, his voice cracking, “it’ll be to kill you.”

Ichigo sucked in a breath, but he wasn’t sure what he could even say. Grimmjow didn’t give him the chance; sonido taking him past them all in a blur of blue-black motion as he flickered through the hall and out the front door. Glass shattered distantly, but he barely heard it. A few seconds after silence fell, Urahara sighed.

“An undesirable side-effect,” he murmured to himself. “Albeit a short-term one. Karin-san, let me take a look at that eye. Tessai-san should be able to—”

“Dad will take care of it when he comes back,” Ichigo said woodenly, still staring at the doorway to the entrance hall. “Please leave. We have to…have to clean up.” Recover, he meant to say, but it sounded too much like he’d been wounded too. All he’d done was watch it all fall to pieces. But then, he’d known it was coming the entire time. Did that make him as guilty as Urahara? Maybe it did.

They could have sedated him, or locked him up. Not housed him, dressed him, laughed with him. Touched him. Gotten into bed with—oh, god. Ichigo cringed down on himself.

For lack of anyone else to take charge, Yuzu hobbled to Urahara and pointed him to the door. Karin just knocked her temple against Ichigo’s knee, holding onto him like a lifeline. At the bottom of the stairs, Kon was peeking around the corner nervously in Ichigo’s body.

“I’ll take your anger and your blame,” Urahara said after a moment, tugging the brim of his hat down over his eyes. “Contact me should you need me, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing Grimmjow for some time.”

“No shit,” Karin husked, but Urahara was already turning to leave. He’d worn his geta inside, Ichigo noticed distantly, listening to his clacking footsteps as he left. He’d been more panicked than prepared, despite how in control he looked.

Finally, it was the four of them, with Kon scuttling out of his hiding place to pull out the first aid kit.

“Isshin has his weekly meeting with the hospital director this morning,” Kon babbled, more to himself than anything as he pulled random items out of the box. “Do we need shock blankets? I might need a shock blanket. That guy was terrifying.”

“He was scared,” Karin whispered, clutching her throat. Yuzu hopped up to get her water, her hands trembling finely. “Or confused. Anyone would be.”

Ichigo knelt down with them all slowly, legs shifting so he was propped against the wall. A few feet away, the plaster was falling off the wall in a spreading shockwave of cracks. The futon was a mess, too; they had cleaning up to do.

Casting out his senses, Ichigo tried to feel out Grimmjow’s presence but there was just nothing. Garganta had probably taken him away. Maybe it was for the best that he had nothing to follow. He honestly didn’t know what he would have said anyway.

All they could do really, was go their separate ways and patch the damage. It had only been a temporary reprieve, anyway. Midnight had struck. Things hadn’t gotten worse, they’d just gone back to normal.

_If I ever see any of you again, it’ll be to kill you._

Yeah.

Normal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [steeples fingers] 
> 
> :|


	4. Chapter 4

The Kurosaki family put themselves back together again quickly. They were pretty good at it by then, and even better at closing over the holes left by other people, figurative and otherwise. With the wall patched and painted and the living room cleared of any sign of Grimmjow, it was easier to function. No big deal.

Karin healed quickly with a little daily kidou from Isshin, but there was a steel glint in his eyes that said Urahara was on the top of his shit list and would be for a long time to come. Strangely, for all his over-protectiveness he didn’t seem to blame Grimmjow either, something Ichigo wouldn’t question. Yuzu just quietly went about her routine, but even she seemed bemused by the strange vibe in the house. Maybe Ichigo was the source.

Nobody much talked to him about Grimmjow after it happened.

It was probably for the best.

A few weeks passed by, and nothing got better or worse. Just more of the same. Ichigo wasn’t sure why that didn’t satisfy him, when everything said that it would all go to hell if Grimmjow ever came back. He wasn’t the sort to make idle threats. Unsettled by his own reaction, he tried to remind himself that it wasn’t a catastrophe. Grimmjow had recovered from the influence of Urahara’s drugs. He was just back to normal now, if shaken and angry about it. It was Ichigo who had changed.

Denying it was impossible. But accepting it wasn’t the problem, it was knowing just how easy it had been to let Grimmjow in. It hadn’t been an earth-shattering turnaround for him, not at all. All it had taken was for Grimmjow to look at him—really look, like he’d been so pleased with himself for saying—and decide he wanted what he saw. Ichigo hadn’t stood a chance against that kind of open appreciation, despite knowing in his heart that it wasn’t real. He’d wanted it to be real, in a way he’d never wanted anything or anyone before. He’d been completely and truly suckered.

What kind of desperate asshole missed something that never really existed in the first place?

Weeks turned into a month. Two months slowly dragged by. Ichigo didn’t go near the Urahara shop, and left all his texts unread. Grimmjow’s presence never resurfaced.

That too, was probably for the best.  
  


* * *

  
Yuzu dropped the dirty pot in the sink so hard that suds sloshed over the rim.

“It’s just—stupid! It was four days!” she cried, grabbing the scourer from its dish with a clatter. Bits of baked-on curry flew up in the air. “He choked Karin so hard her eyeballs almost fell out! He kicked me in the stomach! Grimmjow is a crazy hollow monster, and he wants to murder us all, and I hate him. I _hate_ him.”

A little freaked out by the outburst, Ichigo slowly reached for the next glass on the draining rack to dry. Yuzu had been weird ever since the incident, in her quiet, understated way. Nothing he could really put his finger on; just deep in thought sometimes, or organising the linen cupboard until everything was uniform and tidy. The old red racecar quilt cover had been a victim of that clean-out too, and Ichigo couldn’t bring himself to be mad about it. He didn’t want to see it again. But other than a few moments of manic stress-cleaning and absentmindedness, that was the first Ichigo had seen of Yuzu actively stewing on Grimmjow’s brief stay in their lives.

“It’s okay to be angry,” Ichigo said finally, lining the glasses up on the sink. “He made you feel afraid. He threatened you.”

“I am angry,” Yuzu said, scrubbing like her life depended on it. “I wanted you to kill him. Seeing Karin floating up in the air like that, his stupid wobbling outline holding her there, I didn’t know what had happened. I thought he’d tricked us. And then Karin told me what it all was, all the stuff I missed because my contact lens was upstairs.” The pot finally clean, she dumped it in the water of the next sink to get the suds off and handed it to him. Her face was miserable as she blinked at the wall in front of them. “She said he looked like someone had kicked _him_ in the stomach.”

Ichigo swallowed a little, blinking down at the dishtowel in his hands. With slow, deliberate movements, he started to dry the pot. How the hell was he supposed to reply to that? Why was she even still thinking about it?

“Like, I get that it was a love potion,” she continued, pulling the plug out of the sink. “But that was made so he’d love you, wasn’t it? Why was he so nice to us if that wasn’t part of it?” Taking the corner of his towel, Yuzu dried her hands in quick, frustrated motions. “He helped me change the kitchen light one night, you know. You weren’t even around, but when it blew and I had to replace it, he lifted me all the way up to the ceiling so I didn’t have to get the chair. Why was that part of Urahara’s stupid potion?”

Ichigo stared at her. Grimmjow had done that? It didn’t sound like something he’d do, not without getting a reward out of it. Mostly he’d moped and let them put makeup on him in exchange for goods and services. Looking up at the white fluorescent tube, Ichigo tried to imagine Grimmjow patiently holding Yuzu up by her waist while she swapped out the old starter for the new one. Then just putting her back down, never mentioning it to anyone. He frowned, trying to understand it.

“Maybe because you’re my family, the drug made you important to him too.” Turning away, Ichigo opened the cupboards and started packing dishes away into them. “Don’t obsess over it, Yuzu. The last time you saw Grimmjow was when he was at his most genuine. That’s who he really is.”

“What, devastated?”

“Dangerous,” Ichigo corrected impatiently. What the hell had Karin been telling her? “If you ever see or sense him again, don’t try to talk to him. Just run in the other direction. He’s a—a frothing psychopath, and anything in those four days before he came out of it was just bullshit and drugs talking.”

“You’re going to break that glass if you squeeze it any harder,” was all Yuzu said, squinting at him doubtfully. He handed it off to her, his fingers aching. “You know I’ll do what you say. But for the record, if I was Grimmjow after all that, I’d probably miss us a little. We’re awesome.”

“Yeah,” Ichigo agreed, his mouth kicking up in a faint smile. “Anyone would be lucky to have us.”

Anyone who wanted them, anyway.  
  


* * *

  
When Ichigo finally went through the string of unread messages from Urahara, he wasn’t really sure what to expect. Apologies, maybe, but texting them didn’t really seem like his style. Urahara was old-fashioned; when he was really sorry, he said so properly and in person. So the texts didn’t really make sense until he opened them.

He waited until Kon was curiously tucked under his arm on the bed, ready and willing to play the angry stalwart friend who rejected any attempts to smooth things over. But that wasn’t what was in there. It looked…more like a report. Snapshots of the weeks that had followed.

 **[Sandal-Hat]:** _Dimensional disruption scanners indicate garganta to Hueco Mundo opened twenty-eight seconds after Grimmjow left the Kurosaki residence. No damage to Karakura recorded._

Well, no shit. Ichigo didn’t need to be a genius scientist to put two and two together there.

 **[Sandal-Hat]:** _I’ve instructed Isshin-san to bill me for the cost of replacing the broken glass by your front door._

If Ichigo knew his father, and especially the dark look on his face when Urahara was mentioned, Isshin had ignored the olive branch completely. If Urahara pushed the point, Isshin was far more likely to break that branch in half and shove both ends up his ass. He kept scrolling.

 **[Sandal-Hat]:** _Day sixteen, post-departure. Two days ago, absolutely all trace of the substance would have left Grimmjow’s system. He is utterly himself again. Small consolation, but if he comes back to kill you all, know that he does so in full possession of his faculties._

“Oh, yay,” Kon scoffed, settling his fuzzy ass in Ichigo’s elbow. “What a cocksore Urahara is.” Despite his glum mood, Ichigo huffed a small laugh. “Keep going, I want to be angrier than this.” But the rest was just small observations about the chemical, from the kidou-inside-the-kidou trick Urahara had used to get readings off Grimmjow when he bound him. Blood temperature (fine), hollow hole stability (within normal range, barring one spike), stress levels (off the fucking charts), pheromones (non-existent). It was that last one that Ichigo squinted at, tapping the message to expand it.

 **[Sandal-Hat]:** _As expected, the chemical inhibited any output of hollow mating hormones, bypassing natural biological processes entirely. Pheromone levels would have remained at zero percent to point-zero-five percent for up to a week after it was expelled from the body. Simply put: Grimmjow’s own animal instinct was never a factor in his infatuation, which was of an artificial chemical nature only. Perhaps this is of some consolation to you: it was all a fiction. No need to remain awkward about it, should you two ever meet again._

Ichigo read it three times to make sure he understood it correctly. By the final lap, the ache in his chest felt like it had grown into a full-blown hollow hole of his own.

So it was all just the drug. By design, it had even squashed any chance of Grimmjow’s own preferences playing a part. For Ichigo, for people, for guys, for anything. The drug had wiped out anything for or against him. A total override. God, it was disgusting—he should have just gotten as far away from Grimmjow as he could, not kept him nearby to make sure he didn’t fucking die. All his own emotions had been inverted, tainted, distorted so he’d do things he’d never have otherwise even thought of. No wonder he’d attacked everyone in sight the moment he came out of it. He’d probably barely even known who he was, after that.

Ichigo had tried to help, to make sure the side-effects didn’t hurt him. Instead, he’d been complicit in an absolute violation of Grimmjow’s mind and heart, if not his body. Nobody could congratulate him for his restraint. Looking back on it all, Ichigo wanted to vomit at everything he’d said or done to him. The whole circumstances around taking the drug hadn’t been Ichigo’s fault, no. But the rest? The rest?

“Ah, don’t make that face,” Kon said quietly, turning to look up at him with button-black eyes. “Whatever happened, you kept him away from Urahara’s tests and you kept him in one piece. You’re a good guy, Ichigo. A grumbling pain in the ass sometimes, but you’re a kind-hearted prude. By the time all the drugs burned out of him, Grimmjow would remember that much, right?”

Locking his phone with a small audio clicking sound, Ichigo dumped it up on his desk and used his heels to drive himself back into the pillows on his bed. Kon came with, hanging onto his bicep like a baby chimp until Ichigo detached him. For a long time, he just blinked at the darkened ceiling with a head too full of noise to make any real sense of his feelings. He felt sick, and he felt sad, but the rest was just a knotted up tangle he didn’t even want to pick apart.

Rolling onto his side toward the wall, Ichigo squeezed his eyes shut. Against his side, his own hand was resting in the space below his ribs. It reminded him of another night, another hand. A lie.

Maybe this was what he deserved, Ichigo thought dully. The gut-wrenching ache of something so unrequited it didn’t even exist anymore in the form he’d experienced it. He was missing someone who was nothing more than chemicals and some homemade chocolate.

It didn’t get much more pathetic than that.  
  


* * *

  
Ichigo awoke to the sound of glass breaking.

Something hard slammed into his wardrobe door. Around him, shards of glass sprayed across his bed where the curtains had blown open. Snapping upright, nerves jangling with alarm, Ichigo grabbed Kon and hushed him before he could make a fuss in case someone was out there listening.

After a few seconds of light breathing, tense with anticipation, Ichigo heard the scrape of a footstep outside. Fuck. Folding the blankets down to the foot of the bed to cover the glass, he put Kon on the pillow and got on his knees, pulling the curtain aside to see who had smashed his window.

Ichigo’s stomach dropped to his feet.

It was Grimmjow. He stood in the small alley alongside the house, another fist-sized rock poised to throw. With his human vision, Ichigo couldn’t make out more than the pale smear of his face in the darkness, but the set of his shoulders and the jut of his chin said he meant business. When he saw Ichigo looking down at him, he hurled the second rock anyway. It smashed the other pane with such force some of the flying glass nicked his cheek. Snapping back in surprise more than pain, Ichigo swore softly and put his head back out there anyway. Might as well get it over with.

“Get your sword,” Grimmjow said, and spat on the ground. “Or the next one’ll be a cero.”

“Don’t do it, Ichigo,” Kon stage-whispered beside him, but it soon morphed into a gagging sound as Ichigo reached into his mouth and pulled out his soul pill. Dropping it into his own mouth, feeling the ghostly punch of his shinigami form being expelled from his flesh and blood, Ichigo turned in time to make sure Kon didn’t fall off the bed and into the broken glass.

“Don’t try to do anything until we’re well away from here, okay?” Ichigo hesitated. “If he just wants to fight, that’s normal. That’s good. Urahara can pay for the broken glass anyway, if he’s so into making amends.”

“Forget the glass, Ichigo, what if he breaks you?” Grabbing his wrist with fingers still warm from sleep, Kon screwed up his face in concern. “Humiliation can make a person mean. Real mean. It might have all been on Urahara, but I don’t trust an arrancar not to—”

“Kurosaki!” Grimmjow snarled. The window lit bright red with an impending cero. They were out of time.

“Shut up and trust me,” Ichigo said, checking his swords. “Make sure I’m not followed.” Pushing the curtains and Kon’s spluttering protests aside, he opened the window properly and shot through it, landing a safe distance away in the alley.

His shinigami eyes were sharper than his human form, but Ichigo still didn’t like what he saw when he looked at Grimmjow for the first time in more than two months.

His knuckles were bleeding, the skin split like he’d already been punching something before he arrived. The blood showed up almost black under the red reiryoku of the cero hovering in his hand. Grimmjow just stared at him over it for a long, clouded moment, his eyes slitted and stony. Harder than anything Ichigo had seen before in that face.

“All right,” Ichigo said evenly, trying for calm. “I’m down here, and I’ve got my swords. Get rid of the cero.”

Grimmjow barely reacted for a short, breathless second. For an instant Ichigo was afraid he might throw it anyway. Then slowly, one by one, his fingers closed over the light. It extinguished with a hiss more than a dispersion. Ichigo thought he could smell burnt skin. Oh, this was bad.

“Follow me.” Snatching his eyes away from Ichigo, Grimmjow leapt into the air. Before Ichigo could blink, sonido had carried him three blocks away, his reiatsu touching Ichigo’s senses in quick, flickering surges. All he could do was follow, an unfathomable dread swirling in his stomach like a storm.

It didn’t take an in-depth conversation to know that Grimmjow wasn’t himself anymore. There was something sharp, almost unstable in his demeanour that Ichigo had never seen before. Usually before a fight he was alive with vicious energy; almost joyous with it. This time he felt cold. Removed. Almost clinical. What was he up to?

Grimmjow’s path took them both not to the outskirts of town, or Urahara’s bunker, where they usually—used to—have their sparring matches. Instead he landed in the centre of Ichigo’s old high school’s sports field: a wide, fenced-in grassy expanse in the centre of Karakura. Ichigo knew that field like the back of his hand. The sprinklers were running in half-arcs in one quarter of the field, turning off and on in sections to keep everything green and lush. The spray coming off it as the wind picked up was absolutely freezing. Ichigo followed him down, looking about like he might find any other living soul there to explain what was happening. Finally, he looked to Grimmjow, who had a hand on the pommel of his sword.

“We can’t fight here,” Ichigo ventured, gesturing to the buildings not too far away. “Nothing’s reinforced, we’ll blow half the school down.”

“Not here to fight. Here to kill you.” Grimmjow drew his sword. Moonlight flashed off the steel as Pantera was unsheathed in one clean movement. His slitted eyes were empty. “Just thought you might want to die with a sword in your hand.”

And just like that, he attacked.

No talk. No threats. No posturing, or yelling, or claims he was the strongest. Ichigo barely darted back in time to evade and draw Zangetsu’s longsword, steel clashing in sparks and the whipping unnatural wind of reiatsu pounding against their blades. Across the short distance, Grimmjow was staring straight through him, mouth tense and bloody knuckles showing white around his sword. _What had happened?_ Ichigo had no chance to ask as a flurry of strikes rained down around him, each one angled to hit his throat, his chest, his stomach. Killing blows, all of them: targeted with dispassionate precision.

Grimmjow wasn’t trying to fight. He was trying to execute him.

It went against—everything—

“Talk to me,” Ichigo said, almost desperately. He parried a blow so hard he had to turn his blade just to withstand it without skidding across the field. “Grimmjow. I know what happened was fucked up. It was. It was, and I’m sorry. I tried to do everything I could to keep you alive and okay while that gross drug ran its course.”

The first real expression so far twisted Grimmjow’s pale features then: loathing, or something like it. Up close, Ichigo could see the shadows under his eyes, and the cut in the corner of his mouth. Maybe something had hit him. Maybe he’d bit it. Suddenly, there was no way to know anything about Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.

“Stop talking.” Striking three times down, hard and brutal, Grimmjow almost smashed Zangetsu out of his hand. “Gross drug? You want to talk to me about that fucking drug? Try soaking in it so hard even a trash piece of shit shinigami starts looking good. Try having no idea what’s up or down or who you even are, while some smug asshole and his family play house with you like you’re _a fucking pet!_ ”

Ichigo flinched. “That wasn’t what it was!”

“ _Fuck_ you!” Eyes blazing, teeth bared, Grimmjow summoned a cero of blinding, dense crimson reiryoku and shot it straight into Ichigo’s wrist.

Blistering agony exploded through the joint, shattering it like old stone in one concentrated blast of power. Unable to muffle it, Ichigo clenched his teeth and howled through the pain, seeing Zangetsu fall from his nerveless fingers at the same time a splayed palm smashed him in the chest, sending him flying back across wet grass. His body tore up the field with his momentum, leaving him in a shallow trench of soil and rock. Before he could fight himself to his feet, Grimmjow was on him again, shoving him down so hard his head bounced off something in the grass. Sparkling light flew across his vision, but it was no match for the blue eyes blazing down at him with venomous rage.

Grimmjow really wanted to kill him, Ichigo realised slowly, feeling warmth flow down the back of his neck. Like—like it’d exorcise whatever demons he had. If he could kill Ichigo, it could be okay for him again. Normal. His vision rippled and darkened slightly, warning of the head injury he’d taken. His wrist was screaming with a silent voice, a charred manacle of bleeding skin wrapped around it. And kneeling above him, an arrancar stared down with a sword in his hand, teeth bared on a snarl, his other hand—

His other hand splayed across his own stomach, right over the empty void of his hollow hole.

Like maybe he was in pain, too.

“Grimmjow,” Ichigo whispered, blinking back the light, “what happened to you?” He reached out for the hand clutching his stomach when he knew, he fucking _knew_ he should have been reaching for his shortsword. He wasn’t even surprised when Grimmjow dropped Pantera to knock his hand away and slug him in the jaw.

“You,” he spat, slamming already-split knuckles into the side of Ichigo’s face, half-catching him in the ear. Pain rocketed through his head, echoing off the back of his skull. “You fuckin’ happened to me, and I can’t fix it! Kisuke can’t fix it! So if I’m gonna be fuckin’ stuck like this for the rest of my shitty life, then I might as well get some fuckin’ revenge for it.” Watching Ichigo turn his head and spit blood into the grass, Grimmjow smiled savagely. There was no pleasure in it. “Least I won’t have to look at you again.” He raised his fist again. This time, Ichigo caught it, taking the force with his left palm and wrapping his fingers over the top of his knuckles, fitting in each bleeding dip between them.

“Sorry, but I’m not just going to let you kill me.” Coughing, Ichigo forced himself to sit up, his entire head ringing like a church bell. Grimmjow was too busy staring at their hands to move right away, his lips trembling on a snarl that threatened to turn into something else. When he switched his eyes to Ichigo, he froze up at their proximity. Blue eyes flickered down to Ichigo’s bleeding mouth, then snatched away in rigid condemnation. His fist was still inside Ichigo grasp.

With a sudden inhale of realisation, Ichigo squeezed it tight.

“You’re still in love with me,” he said hoarsely, knowing it couldn’t possibly be true. “But the drug wore off, Grimmjow. It’s gone. Whatever you’re driving yourself insane with, it’s just the memory of something fake. Urahara said it was all just the stupid potion—”

“Then why do I still _feel like this?!_ ” Grimmjow yelled, his voice cracking. That close, breath bathing his face, Ichigo could see nothing but furious anguish in his eyes. Beneath them, his green estigma was more pronounced than ever. “You’re nothing to me but a mark, Kurosaki, not—hollows don’t _love!_ That’s the whole fuckin’ point of us! We’re too far gone!” Pulling his fist out of Ichigo’s hold, Grimmjow grabbed him by the collar of his shihakushou and dragged him in close. “Now Kisuke’s saying that’s bullshit after all, arrancar are different and this shit is never going away? I’ll fucking make it go away!”

Grimmjow reached for his sword again, pinning Ichigo’s good arm with his other. It forced him to use his injured arm to slam his elbow into Grimmjow’s sternum, trying to shove him off his legs. It didn’t work; instead of being moved more than half a foot he just yanked Ichigo’s arm away.

Unfortunately, his hand closed right over the smashed bones of his wrist and the blistering skin that covered it. Ichigo had no chance of biting down his scream, or his reflective flinch away. Nausea roiled in his stomach, threatening to make him vomit from the pain. Head down, cradling his shattered arm, Ichigo grit his teeth and tried to breathe through his nose. Cold sweat broke out all over his body in a sickly rush.

Grimmjow froze up. Ichigo couldn’t bring himself to look, knowing he was wide open for another hit, but there was no movement or sound. For a long, strange moment, all he could hear was his own ragged breathing.

Around them, automated sprinklers shoved their heads out of the grass and began to spray in long, angled plumes of white water. The freezing rain of it coming down around them just topped off the worst night of Ichigo’s life. Swallowing past his pain, he blinked water and sweat out of his vision and tried to look Grimmjow in the eye.

He was saturated by then, the same as Ichigo was. His hair was hanging limp over his brow in wet, darker blue tendrils that dripped water down his cheek. Still sitting on Ichigo’s knees, keeping him pinned to the grass so he could kill him properly. But the look on his face was pure, unadulterated misery. Gone was the fury, the rage, the coldness and the wrath. But without it, all he looked like was a wild thing in pain, tearing himself to pieces just to get away.

“You can’t love me,” Ichigo said, but he was faltering. “Maybe you’re just remembering through the filter of that drug. I was an asshole, Grimmjow. You weren’t yourself, and I—I didn’t always push you away when I should have.”

“Did nothing _but_ push me away,” Grimmjow said, barely blinking as the sprinklers did another round. There was a fine tremble running through him that moved through Ichigo’s thighs. “Bet it was a real laugh. A lovesick arrancar. A real sick joke, you having to fend me off while I pawed at you like a fuckin’ animal.” His jaw twitched. “How many times did you have to wash your mouth out after I kissed you, huh? Five, ten times? Til that _gross drug_ wore off and you didn’t have to worry I’d snap in half anymore?”

Ichigo’s shoulders came up. “I told you then, you’re not disgusting—”

“And just who the fuck are you anyway, to be getting in my head? You’re nothin’ special. Just the first dumbshit to want to tend a wound on me.” Rough fingers slid into Ichigo’s wet hair, yanking his head up further. Down the nape of his neck, he could feel blood and cold water run into his collar. Grimmjow slid up his legs like a predator scenting weakness, but there was a controlled demolition happening behind his eyes. “Just some shitty orange hair and mud brown eyes, just like you said.” His eyes dropped to Ichigo’s lips. “S’just a mouth, busted to hell from my fist. Like the rest of you. Why haven’t you fought back yet?”

Ichigo just stared at him wordlessly.

Because I’m tired.

Because it hurts.

Because I deserve it.

Because I love you.

Ichigo couldn’t pick which answer to give, so he didn’t give any of them. He simply sat under the freezing artificial rain in the muddy hole Grimmjow had thrown him, holding his ruined arm to his chest like an injured bird. All he could do was let Grimmjow hold his head up by the fist in his hair, and look right back. There was no fixing it. Grimmjow hated him as much as he thought he loved him. More. Hated him for seeing it, for being a shinigami, for—pitying him, or whatever he thought he’d done. Ichigo didn’t always know when he’d lost, but he knew it then, right deep down in the pit of his stomach.

Slowly, something in Grimmjow’s expression started to change. The bitter challenge, the tension and anger couldn’t hold on in the silence between them. It faded, and so did the grip in his hair. His hand slid down to Ichigo’s shoulder, flinched away, then re-settled there over the sodden cling of his uniform.

“Why…why do you look like that?” Grimmjow asked, in a voice not entirely steady. “Oi, Kurosaki.”

There was no explanation for it. Nothing Grimmjow would ever accept, anyway; he’d never believed Ichigo before. Words were mostly noise to him. And, hell, Ichigo didn’t know what he looked like, sitting there bruised and bloody, his wrist thumping in agony between them. Probably like a depressed asshole getting soaked in a field.

“I’d say you’re making great progress on the not loving me thing,” Ichigo said finally, pulling in a mostly calm breath, desperately trying for deflection. “At this rate, you’ll be back to hating me in no time. You’ll be fine.” Feeling like the rage had finally left Grimmjow, meaning the attack was probably over, he started looking around for a way to get free and find his sword.

“Never hated you. Told you that already.” Slowly, the hand on his shoulder slid away. “Back then, I was angry about a lot of shit. Aizen’s strength, owing him for what I evolved into, being shoved to my knees by shinigami who wanted to fight stupid fucking shinigami wars. Thought…thought you were just like ‘em, looking down on me. Didn’t really realise you were just looking right at me.” The fingers that left his shoulder hovered hesitantly, then fell away from him entirely. “Not til a lot later. But there’s fuckin’ oceans between seeing an arrancar and wanting one.” His mouth tightened for a moment. “I don’t know how to be like this for the rest of my shitty immortal life, thinking about every time you smiled at me or what your fuckin’ hair smells like, or how warm your stupid thighs were under my cheek.” Blue eyes narrowed and slid away, his cheeks darkening. He looked utterly beaten, and Ichigo hadn’t laid a finger on him. “I wake up sometimes and I’m still tasting you in my mouth.”

It occurred to Ichigo then, as he stared at Grimmjow with his heart thumping hard and heavy behind his ribs, that he might just be receiving everything he wanted—and he was doing absolutely nothing to take it. The drug was gone; burned out of Grimmjow’s system weeks ago _and he still loved Ichigo._ Not from the influence of Urahara’s shitty chocolates, or even very willingly, but he did. Somehow, in the memory of their four days together and all the little moments that Ichigo had been turning over carefully ever since, thinking he’d been alone in them, Grimmjow had been holding them up to the Hueco Mundo moonlight in growing disbelief. Yeah, the potion had made him say and do things he’d never have dreamt of otherwise. But the result of those words and actions—Ichigo’s reactions—had been real. Later, so had the feelings Grimmjow had studied in himself until they drove him insane with the sheer impossibility of it.

To Grimmjow, a hollow that could love didn’t exist.

Looking at Ichigo in open, undisguised longing, Grimmjow now knew that wasn’t remotely true.

And Ichigo was still just sitting there, staring at him in disbelieving hope.

 _Do something._ The thought didn’t even feel like it came from him. It didn’t even feel like a thought.

Ichigo reached up with his good hand, and with the barest edge of his fingertip, he touched the bright teal estigma that marked the corner of Grimmjow’s eyes. It was warm and smooth, like the rest of his skin. It felt just like the orange one. And Grimmjow let him do it, nostrils flaring and eyes darting away, like he wanted to fight but couldn’t. Wouldn’t.

_Do something._

Licking his lips, tasting blood in the corner of his mouth, Ichigo leaned in slowly and pressed his mouth to the tense line of Grimmjow’s. The contact was cold and wet where the sprinkler water had run down his face, but the pressure of his lips was still soft in ways his expression couldn’t harden.

Grimmjow yanked away, teeth clenched. “Don’t do that.”

Ichigo just kissed him again. This time, his fingers found the edge of his jacket collar and held on. The mouth under his trembled, just once—and then Grimmjow was kissing him back with force, hands flying up to cup Ichigo’s jaw, dragging him in by it to sink his tongue deep inside the open mouth welcoming him. The hard bone of his mask shoved into Ichigo’s cheek with the impact, dimpling his skin, but neither of them cared. Smashed wrist, burnt skin, bleeding and bruised, Ichigo still couldn’t feel anything but the hard rain of the sprinklers arcing over them and the heat where Grimmjow’s wet, cold mouth was burning against his own.

He kissed like he was dying, Ichigo thought distantly, curling his fingers behind Grimmjow’s ear to tug on his hair, keeping them anchored together. He kissed like they both were dying and he’d never get another chance to do it. Again and again his mouth retreated and returned, finding new angles and new pressure, sinking his questing tongue deep into Ichigo’s mouth like he was rediscovering territory he’d thought long lost. It was brutal, and warm, and so thorough that Ichigo’s head spun, caught up in the discovery. In being discovered, for real this time.

And Ichigo—he was hurt and bleeding and hesitant to ruin it, but at the same time, when would he get another chance if it all went wrong? So he leaned into each kiss, shuddering breaths pulled in through his nose, his sole working hand slipping over skin and sodden fabric and the wet slide of saturated blue hair. Grimmjow tasted like wet grass and surrender and fury, all edged in copper and salt and need. It was nothing like the sweet kisses from the potion—this was bruising, hard, needy, tugging on the cut in his lip and driving past it with tongue and teeth. Grimmjow kissed like he wanted to destroy him, or crawl inside him. In that dizzying moment, Ichigo was okay with either. With both.

When a wet hand dragged down the parted fold of Ichigo’s shihakushou and found his hammering heartbeat, his eyes popped open. That close, even wreathed in shadow, Ichigo could see the question in Grimmjow’s burning blue eyes. He struggled to find an answer that might satisfy him.

“I didn’t touch you then because I knew it wasn’t real. I couldn’t use you. Even if you might have let me.”

“And now?”

“And now…” Ichigo shifted, aching and cold, until he could tug Grimmjow’s heavy weight further up his thighs. Against his chest, a splayed hand pressed against his heart. “We’ve always done things on even ground, haven’t we? This is about as even as it gets, and I really want to see where things lead.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Once I get a full healing, anyway.”

“Waited this long,” Grimmjow breathed, knuckling the tender corner of his own cut lip. His eyes were searching, almost wondrous. “If you really want me, I’ll wait as long as you want.”

It sounded so much like the easy, earth-shattering promises he’d been making while on the drug. This time, Ichigo knew exactly who was making them. He leaned in for one more kiss, warm under the freezing spray. When they drew apart, the words he spoke brushed Grimmjow’s lips like a promise.

“Let’s skip the rules this time.”

From the hands that dipped him back into the grass and the mouth that hungrily ran over every expanse of wet skin he could find, Grimmjow wholeheartedly agreed.  
  


* * *

   
It took another two months for everything to even out between them.

Grimmjow, ever freaked out by the idea of soft emotion even when it was fully and freely returned, ran a few times. But he always came back. Almost five months from Valentine’s Day, Grimmjow turned up on the door of the Kurosaki household with his eyes downcast and his hands full.

Karin and Yuzu were given apologies in the form of twin knives he’d hand-carved from the skull of a dead hollow in Hueco Mundo. Invisible to an untrained eye, he told them, and promised he would understand if either of them used the tiny knives to stab him. They hugged his sides instead and offered to call him Grimm-nii at every available opportunity. The red-faced resolve it took for Grimmjow not to crack their heads together would be burned on Ichigo’s memory for a long time to come.

Isshin received a small, worn leather pouch, and some awkward mumbling about all the broken windows. The pouch contained a huge handful of multicoloured cut gems, which Grimmjow explained came from someone named Baraggan’s stash. The man had the thirst of a dragon before he’d been defeated, and his fracción had always been picking up jewels and gold in the living world to please him. Las Noches was full of it, Grimmjow said grudgingly, staring at the wall while everyone stared at him.

Isshin, ever the pragmatist, declared the pouch of stolen jewels a dowry and freely gave Ichigo to Grimmjow forever and ever amen, in the spirit of every father completely bought by shiny hard stones and a lot of awkward shuffling.

A week later, Grimmjow moved in, and it wasn’t onto a guest futon in the living room.

Two weeks after that, half-buried together under sheets and warm laughter, Ichigo finally told Grimmjow he could use his tongue.

The rest was history.

Mostly.

“You ever keep some of those chocolates?” Grimmjow asked late one night, shifting so Ichigo’s fingers could trace further down between his hips. “I had some ideas for fucking Kisuke up proper. Do you still talk to that weird fuck with the face paint in Soul Society?”

Ichigo’s eyes snapped open wide. “Captain Kurotsuchi. And yeah, I packed them under my bed because I was scared some homeless person might find them in the rubbish.” His hand stilled. “You want to…wait, but who?” It’d have to be someone so unattainable and cold that Urahara would probably eat himself trying to win their favour. Urahara had his fingers in every pie ever invented. There was no way they could find someone who could punish him enough.

But Grimmjow just turned his head on the pillow and smiled, sharp-toothed and wicked.

“Two words, Ichigo: Tier Harribel.”

And that was how Ichigo learned that revenge served hot might be delicious, but served as cold as the heart of Hueco Mundo?

 _That_ was a Valentine’s Day treat worth waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy delayed-gratification-valentine's-day-conclusion, you beautiful bastards!


End file.
